Fire & Soul by Siobhan Crosslin Read Free Book Online Page A

he releases his harness.
    "Are you hurt?" I demand, even as I run my hands over his shoulder, his chest.
    "I'm fine," he says. "Where's Mikscn?"
    "Still in our cockpit," I say. I check to make sure he can stand on his own before I scramble up to the pilot's cockpit.
    "I'm fine," Mikscn says when I climb up. He's sitting down, his head cradled in his hands. "Fuck. We've never desynchronized like that before."
    I drag myself back up into my cradle and jack into the computer through my wrist since the adjunct's listing at too extreme an angle for me to connect normally. Most of the initial diagnostics come back clean, shockingly enough. When Aiya and Keito—when the zerospace generator was ripped off, it came away clean, instead of compromising the integrity of the armor.
    "The computer kept Jye asleep," I say, moving on to the next item on my list of what-the-fuck-is-going-on. "It kept Jye asleep, but I've never known an adjunct to do that before." Pilots are much more likely to be incapacitated by a rough landing, so anams are usually woken up to render assistance. I search for the subroutine that did it, and who installed it. The HUD brings up the one name I was hoping it wouldn't.
    "It was Aiya."
    I let my arm drop as I turn to face Jye, the relay disconnecting with another little shock. "How do you know that?" I ask, my fingers twitching when he runs his fingers Mikscn's hair.
    "Because I helped her do it."
    I stare at him hard; even though he obviously has a headache, he's completely calm. He's comforting Mikscn, with his back exposed to the forest.
    "You aren't surprised at all," I realize aloud, because even though Mikscn and I are trained in this kind of thing, we're both twitchy, shocky. I can feel the panic well up and then squish down before rising again. "You planned this."
    "Mostly, it was Keito and Aiya," he says smoothly. "I only had a little input."
    I feel my breath coming too fast, too shallow, as the implications run around my mind. Jye steps forward and I flinch. He just looks at me, though, and I still and let him pull me close, tuck my head under his chin. I can sort of see where he still has a hand buried in Mikscn's hair, and the connection between us stops jumping around so hard, starts to settle down.
    I relax into him, clinging as hard as I can to the fact that Aiya, Keito and Micca raised us. They love us, I know they do. They didn't do this to hurt us. They didn't, and I have to believe that, or I'm going to start screaming and never stop.
    "Sh," Jye whispers. His fingers stroke up and down my spine. "Sh, it's okay. It's gonna be okay."
    I hold on tight and let his words filter into the place where Mikscn and I are us , and close my eyes.
    It isn't until Mikscn and I have calmed down, sitting near the edge of the cockpit with my head in Jye's lap and Mikscn tucked under his arm, that Jye starts talking.
    "The Project," he says, and I flinch despite myself. "You know what it means."
    Project Áed, supposedly the concerted effort of the Brudeah to hide the total enslavement and exploitation of a sovereign race—us, the pilots and anams. The rumor–the myth—is that the Brudeah enslaved the race they shared their planet with, and took over their technology, that that race was technologically superior, but lacking in the militarized force to repel the Brudeah. Those that believe in the Project, those that are part of the pilot-anam resistance, are enemies of the Brudeah Empire.
    "You're part of the resistance," I say dully. "You and Aiya and Keito and Micca."
    "Yes," he says. "We're funded and helped by the Vrah'di. We think you can help us prove the Project exists and get it out to the Hegemony so the Brudeah can't use the Alliance to silence us anymore."
    "No." I don't even twitch at Mikscn's statement. "They'd kill Cherian."
    Jye takes a big breath and I tense. "He's free."
    "No, he's not," I snap.
    Jye's hand tightens on my shoulder. "Why do you think we're here, miles away from any kind of