Ch 10: Tori's Troubles

~
(Tori

The HiAlt Command Hub is weirdly empty today. The rows of consoles that are usually crowded with senior analysts, planners and the other pilots are just vacant. Two junior Infotechs are whispering into their consoles at the far end, heads down on the data.

“Tori! You’re a pilot!”

I know right away it’s Dorian, the big BuilderHelper custodian. It’s the way he always greets me because he knows it makes me laugh. His heavy tool belt jingles as he strides past.

I smile wanly. “Hey Dorian, yeah that’s me, I’m a pilot. You’re not working too hard are you?”

“I like working hard, it’s good!”

“Me too. I like it.” I’m smiling.

“Gotta hurry though, meet my head mechanic. He’s smart like you Tori! Ok bye!” He disappears into a utility stairwell and I hear his steps, heavy but quick, running up the stairs on his way to his next task.

I’m seated in my pilot pod which for me isn’t for piloting; it’s just a workstation. It’s a glass-and-carbon-fibre shell that hugs me like a cockpit. You can fly drones from here but that’s not what I do. My neurotech is already synced with the mission-planning suite, and a map of the continent floats in front of me, layered with weather data, images of the terrain, and enemy radar signatures. I’m supposed to draft my next high-altitude recon flight over the disputed southern border. The mission will give our side the latest intel on those new rail-gun weapons the enemy has deployed.

I’m thinking about what we do, the HiAlt pilots, and how crazy we really are to fly these things. And a lot of people do think we’re crazy or suicidal or whatever. But I’m not suicidal. I do this for fun, the skills needed came pretty easily to me, and it pays well.

So our recon missions are all about us humans actually flying the planes — we fly totally air-gapped, Faraday-shielded, no remote control, and no comms to or from home base. Since the Big Data Breach we have to assume any digital transmission especially by RF is essentially transparent to anyone who wants to listen. Our spy planes mostly fly themselves based on our programmed flight plans, but we sit in the cockpit because there’s no remote piloting. And the plane has to get back safely as we’re carrying critical strategic information. If the plane is disabled, or if we decide, the memory modules self destruct. So we’re the human in the loop of a mostly automated spy tech game.

By interstate Treaty, satellite ground surveillance and military satellite applications are banned. Military satellites were being destroyed as soon as they were deployed. Satellite warfare was clogging low Earth orbit routes with space junk. It was also endangering the orbital mirrors and stratospheric aerosol injectors that keep us safe from another climate catastrophe.

We fly fractional orbital routes with hypersonic re-entry vectors unpredictable to enemy early warning systems, then we grab our pics and data and veer hard up and out of the sky, go orbital again to re-enter and land at base. The flights are like an insane, violent rollercoaster from your worst nightmares. I still scream sometimes. Mostly I laugh, but sometimes I’m just terrified.

There’s a skill to not getting yourself killed at this. My G-suit is a smart-weave that fits tightly over my whole body and neck. It stiffens instantly where required to manage blood flow. The plane’s tech and my neurotech sync with the suit and the seat to help blunt the worst of the impacts. But all the tech only gets you so far. I’ve spent years conditioning my core and practising breath-holding techniques to force the blood to stay in my head. When my tunnel vision goes all gray, the skill is in staying conscious when it shouldn’t be possible, bouncing in and out of space. Sometimes it’s simply about knowing when I’ve blacked out and picking up where I left off. So yeah, we are crazy I guess.

By the Treaty we can’t carry weapons. We get shot at but there’s almost no way for the enemy to target us. From the ground we look like a hypersonic missile that streaks by but doesn’t blow anything up. We’re just passively gathering data and images.

My hands rest on the pod controls, but my mind is elsewhere. The main-level conference hall is packed with senior officers and almost all of the HiAlt pilots, who got the invite to see the Leader presentation. These formal in-person Leader visits only happen a couple of times a year, and they bring a lot of nervous energy.

I glance again at the notification: “Strategic Alignment Summit – Attendance Mandatory for Listed Senior Staff.”

My name is not on it.

A knot tightens in my chest. Not being invited is more than just a small snub. Being invited is a badge of trust, like proof that you’re close to the inner circle that shapes war fighting policy. Being left out is a signal of some kind of problem, like I’m not trusted or I did something wrong. These Leader summits are like “rallies” where the official story gets reinforced — the heroic defensive actions of the war get dramatized, Leaders flaunt their power and benevolence, and feed us the updated narrative. Not being there means I miss the official updates. I’ll have to catch up by asking others and it’ll be awkward.

I’ve spent years grinding my way up the ladder in the Aerospace Force. I mastered space plane flight. Not everyone can do it even after all the training. I have hundreds of successful sorties under my belt. Every flight has been perfect, because it has to be perfect or you die. But now I’m sitting alone in this mostly empty command centre, knowing the entire senior crew is down there and I’m excluded.

My mind goes back to the botched op last month — Recon-D7. It wasn’t the flight that was fucked, it was my intel prep. I somehow missed a critical detail. My plan was simple enough: loop over the western ridge, grab spectral data on a new enemy early warning array, and get back to base. I trusted my usual algorithm to keep me in the radar blind spot. Halfway through, my HUD lit up with a sudden EM-interference flag. My route brushed too close to a brand-new sensor net that was passive or stealthed. My plane auto-issued a “WARN-OFF” and forced a hard abort. I had to veer off and return to base, and we lost the whole data set.

I swear that new sensor net was not in my prep intel packet. Yet when I reviewed it later, fuck me, it was right there.

The debrief was short and simple, but the message was clear. My Senior Commander — who never looks away from his display — just said, “We can’t afford errors like this. The data is lost, and the enemy now knows we’re probing.”

They logged it as a “minor navigational error” and filed it away. Nobody asked why my prep intel failed, they just know I missed the new sensor net. My only consequence was a small note in my file: “Attend supplemental training re flight-path validation procedures.” It’s invisible to anyone but the auditors. Just a little blemish that could snowball if it ever gets stacked with something else.

Now, staring at the empty workstations around me, the memory of that aborted flight makes my chest feel tight again. I keep wondering — am I seen as a liability? Did they decide I’m not trustworthy?

I swipe my planning UI aside and pull up a diagnostic readout of my neurotech. Physiological stress 12% above baseline. Lately, whenever I dive deep into recon planning, tweaking flight corridors or running evasive simulations, I feel this pressure in my temples that spreads down my neck. It isn’t painful, but it’s enough to make me pause. Like a reminder that I could fuck up again. I try to ignore it but lately it’s getting worse.

I lean back and think about other things. A feeling of loneliness has come over me. I crave just one casual friend — just someone to sit with me in the cafeteria, bullshit about nothing and listen without judging. Someone encouraging who could pull me out of this isolation and make me feel seen. I imagine easy banter and the simple comfort of knowing someone is there just for no reason, or just for the sake of being with me. There’s no one to say these things to.

Over the past few months I got close to Mara, a senior officer in HiAltCmd. She’s not a pilot but she’s ok. We first met in the gym, swapping tips about stretching or something, and the conversation drifted to favourite movies and books. We started grabbing lunch together in the cafeteria that overlooks the runways. We swapped stories about our lives and, eventually, about small worries and insecurities. She shared some things, then got embarrassed, and I encouraged her, telling her she deserves to be heard about these things; we all need someone who understands what we’re going through. She actually heard that, and she said it made her feel better. I was so happy just to have said something helpful to another human, that I almost cried right in front of her. Talk about embarrassing. I’m like an emotional bomb waiting to go off at the slightest provocation. Then she just thanked me, and we talked about future stuff like a weekend hike or going to a concert.

Then the next week, she just stops replying to my messages. I saw her at the command centre, but she kept her distance, just nodding slightly before looking back into her console. I finally cornered her in the hallway and asked, “Mara, what’s up? What’s going on?”

She gave me this hard stare and said – I remember her exact words - “I just didn’t realize what kind of person I was dealing with, that’s all.” No elaboration.

When I pushed her on this, she snapped at me: “Stop – asking – about it. Please just get away from me right now.” I recognized the seriousness of her tone and I just stared at her, stunned. I squeaked out “What do you mean? Mara, what are you talking about?” She looked at me so weird, and just walked away, leaving this horrible unspecified accusation hanging in the air.

What “kind of person” does she think I am? I try to replay any misstep I might have made. Maybe a reckless comment at lunch? Something on my social feed? I never do anything weird on my open feed. Nothing weirder than anyone else. Whatever it was, Mara seems convinced there’s something seriously wrong about me, and I can’t even ask her about it.

And then there was that super weird gym incident. I was hitting the heavy bag. I remember the nice burn in my shoulders. I just finished 90 seconds of wailing on the bag and turned to pick up my jump rope when a tall guy in a yellow t-shirt brushed past nearly knocking me over. He muttered something like “You gotta get outta the way.” I turned, expecting an apology, but instead I saw another guy a few metres away, also wearing a yellow t-shirt and his eyes were locked on me with this leering smile and his eyes all narrow. So I said, “Can I help you?” He just gave a little laugh and shook his head, like I had said something crazy. Then, as I’m getting back to my workout, I look up and there’s a woman sitting casually on a weight bench across from me, staring at me, and she’s twirling a yellow towel, staring directly at me with a smirk like she’s daring me to say something to her. Fuck that. I turned away and did my jump rope set. I looked around again and they’re all just working out like regular people using the gym. What the fuck is that?

It was so weird. Ever since, I’ve felt this paranoid vibe at the gym.

I stare at the empty consoles. I hate how quiet it is in here. The weight of all this reality presses down on me.

I’m being shunned. I’m out of the loop.

I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve somehow pissed someone off.

I feel my eyes trying to well up. I close my eyes and exhale. My thoughts are spiralling in a loop of doubt and fear. I’m hunting for something that makes sense. The stronger part of me prevails.

Tori, no. You absolutely are not sitting here crying in the fucking command centre. That is not happening. Your job is to kick ass, well and often. Back to work now.

I have to finish my recon plan for this week and file it.

After working silently all day, I see senior pilots filtering back to their workstations, chatting excitedly. I expect awkwardness when I attend the mandatory briefing at the day’s end and I resolve to act cheerful and excited about whatever narrative the senior staff were fed. But no one acts awkward with me. They don’t seem to realize I wasn’t at the Summit. Maybe it was a mistake that I wasn’t invited. Am I over-thinking things? I do sometimes catastrophize things in my mind.

Tori. Stay positive and don’t react to this. Negative thoughts bring negative things. Declare your authority to God. Believe it and he has to obey. These feelings will pass, everything will be fine. I declare it.

Yeah. Okay. Good. But as I try to sip my water, I notice my fucking hand is shaking and I put it down before anyone notices.