As soon as they heard my call sign, the tension in the tiny cabin evaporated, and all four of my new companions visibly relaxed—especially Milo, who actually smiled in my direction for the first time since I’d stepped aboard.
“The Beagle!” Whoadie repeated, smiling with recognition. “Good to finally meet you. You’re a fucking legend, man!”
I saw Debbie wince when Whoadie dropped her F-bomb.
“IronBeagle?” Chén repeated with raised eyebrows, in what sounded like perfect English.
When I nodded, he lunged out of his seat to shake my hand, talking excitedly in Chinese. Once he finally calmed down and let go of me, we both retook our seats.
“What’s your call sign, Debbie?” I asked, even though I already had a good guess, just due to the process of elimination.
She laid a hand on her chest and bowed her head. “AtomicMom, at your service.” She smiled nervously. “You know, like ‘Atomic Bomb’?”
“Yeah, lady, we get it,” Milo said, rolling his bloodshot eyes.
“Let me guess,” I said, leveling a finger at him. “You’re Kushmaster5000, right?”
He smiled, looking immensely pleased. “The one and only.”
The Kushmaster, also known as “KM5K” to his many detractors, was a pilot known for his incessant (and often unintentionally hilarious) boasting and trash talk on the Chaos Terrain player forums, where he used a prismatic cannabis leaf for his avatar. He also loved to do a running voice commentary of the battles over the public comm channel, like Jack Burton broadcasting on his CB. I usually muted him, but I still recognized his Philly accent, and the cocky attitude that seemed to come along with it. I wasn’t sure I liked him, and he seemed to like it that way.
But in a strange way, learning their call signs suddenly made me feel as though I was among old friends—or at least familiar allies. AtomicMom, Whoadie, CrazyJi, and Kushmaster5000 were all names that I’d been seeing daily for the past year, because they were four of the call signs always listed among the top ten Armada pilot rankings—at first above, and then eventually below my own. When I’d checked the rankings last night, Whoadie’s call sign had been listed right after mine in seventh place, followed by CrazyJi in eighth, AtomicMom in ninth, and Kushmaster5000 in tenth.
“Sorry if I acted like a prick before,” Milo said, solemnly offering me his fist to bump, which I did. “I thought you might be RedJive, or one of those other elitist dicks in the top five.”
Chén read the translation, then whispered a response into his QComm in Chinese. The device instantly translated his words and repeated them in English.
“I was thinking the same thing,” the computer said, in a synthesized male voice that sounded exactly like the one used by Stephen Hawking.
I suddenly found myself wondering if Hawking had been a part of the EDA’s big cover-up, too. And what about Neil deGrasse Tyson? If Carl Sagan had been let in on the secret, it seemed likely that other prominent scientists had, too. I added this to the list of unanswered questions whirling around inside my head, which seemed to only be growing longer as this insane day progressed.
“I am not liking RedJive also,” Chén’s translator went on to declare loudly in its uninflected monotone. “He is an asshole total!”
Whoadie laughed and mimicked the translator’s voice while she made stiff robotic motions with her arms. “Yes!” she intoned. “The Baron is complete face-fuck!”
The others laughed, but I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Luckily, my dad’s impromptu roast was interrupted a second later, when the hatchway leading to the cockpit slid open and an ATHID clanked through it on metal feet. The drone’s head split open and extended a small flatscreen telepresence monitor that displayed a live video image of the drone’s operator, a middle-aged EDA officer with an impressive Sam Elliott–gauge mustache.
“Welcome aboard,” he said. “I’ll be your shuttle pilot today: Captain Meadows.”
The second he finished introducing himself, he was bombarded with questions from all sides, in a variety of accents, and in at least two languages. I wanted to ask him a few thousand of my own, but he was already holding up one of his drone’s clawed hands, motioning for silence. It took a minute.
“I’m not authorized to answer your questions,” he said. “Your new commanding officer will brief you as soon as we arrive at the moon base. If you have any other questions and the answers aren’t classified, you can type them into the EDA Recruit Orientation Manual app on your QComm. Understood?”
Everyone nodded and glanced down at their QComms.
“Outstanding,” the captain said in response to our silent compliance. “We’ll depart in just a few minutes. But before we leave, I’m told there’s someone who wants to see you off.”
He motioned to the open hatchway just as a familiar-looking middle-aged man with red hair stepped through it, leaning into the shuttle’s crowded cabin. He greeted everyone with a gleaming, press-photo friendly smile.