by R. K. Syrus
Bryan recapped a PG-13 version of recent events for Sienna. The combination of Army lingo and shorthand they’d developed over the last twenty-two years made it quick. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe the young woman with the butterbar insignia next to her name was the same child Annalies and Theodora brought home from Khorasan.
“WWHI.” Sienna bit her lower lip. “Still up to their old bunk.”
“If we hurry, we can stop the truck convoy,” Bryan said.
“That’s the obvious play. It’s like a gift,” Sienna said thoughtfully. “You’re on the ground. Your call. I don’t become your CO until you get back here, but an old North Carolina saying comes to mind: timeo Danaos.”
Despite his schooling being light on Latin, it gave Bryan something to cogitate on.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. Now you can get some shut eye.”
“Like heck.”
Sienna’s personal drone camera followed her into the kitchen.
“You and the Dogs are only active because I’m your new adult supervision as assigned by the Pentagon.”
She jabbed at her coffee machine.
“If it wasn’t for this mandatory pre-posting seminar in DC, I’d be there with you at TALOS,” she said. Even without caffeine, his call had made her real lively.
She was right. Bryan was glad she wasn’t with them facing RIP rounds and looney Worldwide Help contractors.
“I want updates every thirty minutes, and send me telemetry from Corporal Nobu’s sensors and feed from your sniper’s optics. I hear Ortiz has a hotshot rep.”
Meanwhile… Bryan mulled on it. The WWHI truck ambulances were a total Trojan fake out. One of the Dogs felt his monopoly of sneak was being infringed upon.
“Who y’think you playin’?” T-Rex yelled at the screen showing the damning evidence.
Nobu remote piloted Draco’s ultralight volocopter. It was empty except for a lizard bot. He dropped that on top of one of the WWHI trucks into which they had loaded the boy-soldier detainees. Its ground-penetrating radar saw inside.
“Empty as T-Rex’s bank account,” Whitebread said.
Backtracking using the volocopter’s optics, they noticed tire marks by a bridge over a branch of the Niger River. The drivers had transferred the child-combatant prisoners to some kind of vessel. Bryan redirected the Ranger element to interdict.
The Army Rangers were still in their boats and got on mission just in time. A few tossed stun grenades and some heated conversation later, up came a semisubmersible.
This type of watercraft was more likely to be in the fleet of Red Mist smugglers than a respectable humanitarian aid organization. The underage insurgents had been captured attacking a US installation. Legally, the US Army had the better claim on them.
Forty-eight of the kid soldiers were alive. Bryan couldn’t let them stay with WWHI, not after what he’d seen. He couldn’t just let them go, either. Najeer had indoctrinated and brainwashed them. Not all could hope for anything like a normal life after what they’d seen and done. Their best hope lay down the Niger River.
“Kinyonga! My brother.”
Elahaj welcomed them at a short wooden dock. He never liked using his actual first names. He kept telling Bryan it was bad juju to keep them. Bryan couldn’t disagree more.
“Looks like you’re movin’ up in the world,” Bryan said, pulling the boat mooring line tight. “Am I going to have to salute you now?”
“My precinct of Kambi Camp has the most solar panels, the most learning centers, and the lowest infection rate,” Elahaj bragged fluently.
Kambi held about eighty thousand people and was one of six similarly sized Oxfam refugee camps in the area. Elahaj was responsible for ten thousand people, mostly women and children.
“These boys,” Elahaj said with a serious look etched onto his kind features, “they could pose us a problem.”
Najeer’s former troops helped their wounded comrades off the boats and along the dock.
“They have only known war. Many do not know their village or their tribe. They have been killing since they were old enough to pull a trigger.”
There had to be something they could do. Something that did not involve WWHI.
Elahaj cracked a bright smile.
“We’ll manage, Kinyonga. We’ll split them up and get them into schools. We’ll get them taking care of the very small ones. Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.”
Bryan and the Dogs caught a ride with the Rangers. They left Elahaj and Kambi Camp before T-Rex could teach too many youngsters his three-card street hustle.
“Your boat will be safe,” his brother said. “I’ve informed the river spirits you no longer belong to them.”
The sun hung low and dappled the Niger with its light. They cast off and waved goodbye.
His brother had called him Kinyonga. That was Swahili for the chameleon, who can choose the color it shows the world.
11
THE POST
NORTH CAROLINA
T-Rex griped all the way home.
“Man, that’s the last time I volunteer for any place with preposterous heat. Why don’t we ever invade someplace cool, like Canada?”
Back in North Carolina, a different kind of consternation awaited. When the quartermaster gave Bryan the address of their new command post, he thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. It was a ranting monologue by a comedian with a real filthy mind.
Bryan fumed, looking at the stained urinals hanging off the walls and the welcome back gifts left by their rivals at the North Carolina Army base.
“Sie—er… Lieutenant McKnight’s due any minute!”
“Maybe we steer her over to the old command post, Sarge?” Whitebread suggested reasonably. “Kind of ease her into things?”
“Good idea,” Snakelips said as she looked around. “We don’t want her putting in for a transfer on day one. The old place only smells like wet dog, not dog sh—”
“Attention!” Bryan barked, calling the area—he couldn’t rightly call it a room—to order. “Officer on deck.”
“At ease.” Second Lieutenant Sienna McKnight walked in. She wore a crisp garrison service uniform, butterbar insignia on her shoulders. “Y’know I grew up on the Post. But I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting this place.”
“Probably on account of it bein’ a mens-only type establishment,” T-Rex said. “Ah, Lieutenant McKnight. Ma’am.”
Snakelips backed out through a splintered plywood door leading to the toilet stalls. Her face looked Army olive green.
“The lieutenant may want to limit her inspection to the exterior until we freshen the place up a bit.”
“Nonsense, Corporal,” Sienna said. “If our colleagues in SFOD left us something, I want to see it.”
She really didn’t. But Bryan was impressed Sienna didn’t flinch when greeted by the spectacle that had been fermenting for a few days in the heat. Every fly in the county had decided to move in to their new billet ahead of them.
Her expression didn’t even change when she snapped on rubber gloves to lift the lid of the toilet tanks to confirm the “upper deckers,” floaters deposited in all the toilet tanks.
They also left a card, more of a note. It was written in marker on cardboard:
HEY POOCHES—HOPE U ALL LIKE YOUR NEW CP!
WE GOT YOU A HOUSEWARMING PRESANT GIFT.
AS YOU CAN SEE EVERY1 CHIPPED IN.
THESE TURDS ARE BETTER SOLDIERS THAN U’LL EVER BE.
YOU ARE GETTING A NOOB BUTTERBAR BITCH LT. AND YOU THINK YOU ARE HOTSHIT. YOU ARE NOT HOTSHIT. THIS IS HOTSHIT.
Under that “welcome home” message, other people using different Sharpies had added post-scripts:
AND YOU CAN TAKE THAT TO THE BANK!
AND STUFF IT!!
“Man, looks like everyone from the detachment contributed,” Nobu concluded.
“Oh damn!” said T-Rex. “How the heck did this happen? How did my life go from bein’ ‘All You Can Be’ to dengue fever, foot rot, being morta
r shelled by the Army’s own Meccano set, and now bein’ evicted from the doghouse and dumped in the crapper?”
“Look on the bright side, Rex,” said Whitebread, “at least there’s plenty of plumbing here for your Jacuzzi.”
T-Rex deployed a ball-peen hammer and was fixing to do some redecorating.
“Private!” Sienna snapped. “Put down that hammer.”
“As Radio Telephone Operator I must advise the CO that fecal emanations may cause delicate equipment to malfunction, ma’am,” Nobu said, supporting his best friend’s redecorating idea.
Sienna nodded. “Noted. However, under Regulation 415-15, no on-base demolition or construction activities shall occur without my secretary having filed DD Form 1391 to HQDA.”
“Lieutenant McKnight,” Bryan said, pointing to the former broom and mop closet, “while you have been reserved an office space as required, no provisions have been made for a steno typist. Unit’s too small, ma’am.”
Sienna hefted up a three-ring binder of Department of Defense regulations and forms as thick as Whitebread’s bicep.
“I’m ahead of you. We have a trainee secretary.”
She tossed the mess of weapons-grade bureaucracy to T-Rex.
“Private, hope you weren’t exaggerating about your typing speed on your enlistment forms, because there will be a test.”
Sienna took a deep breath in, like the place smelled of fresh hay and sunflowers.
“Is that all they got?” their new CO asked in a rhetorical way they must have taught her at West Point. “Heck, I been in jujitsu fights with people who smelled worse.”
Sienna motioned them toward the outer door, where the air was less pungent.
“D Squad! I know you’ve been given the crappy end of… well, a raw deal. But smashing the place up is what these vile bullies in Special Ops expect us to do. You can bet they took inventory with pictures before they let their incontinence hoopla fly.
“You’d all be up for vandalism and destruction of government property. You’ll be Article 15’d! The lot of ya, including Sarge Bryan, who ain’t done nothing except try to keep you off food stamps and out of the psych ward. Anyone want that?”
No one wanted that.
“So what are we gonna do, Lieutenant McKnight, ma’am?” Snakelips asked.
“We’re gonna exceed expectations.”
Sienna went back in her duffel.
“You can draw straws for the stalls,” Sienna said. “But I want you, Private, to gain an appreciation of the workmanship and functional design of American Standard’s urinals.”
She threw a box to T-Rex.
“Denture cleanser is excellent for removing yellow stains from porcelain. Let Sarge know if you run out.”
She was prepared. Maybe Sienna anticipated what awaited them after she learned the location of their new command post. Or she might have checked out the festivities as their colleagues were preparing their “Welcome Back” surprises. No one was better than Sienna at sneaking around the Post without being seen.
Sienna turned to him. “Sarge, make a note: As soon as possible, I look forward to publicly humiliating the rest of Delta at a Base-wide precision marksmanship competition. I bet they cannot aim a high-velocity round any straighter than they can aim a stream of piss.”
Sienna walked out, shouting back, “Dismissed!”
No one said anything for a spell. But from their body language, Bryan could tell the squad was cautiously optimistic about their new CO.
• • •
Over the next week the decommissioned outhouse received a radical renovation. T-Rex even turned the urinals into planters.
“Aloe does good indoors,” he explained while spraying mist onto the bright green leaves, “and the gel inside can be used to treat minor abrasions.”
Lieutenant McKnight put T-Rex in for a commendation, citing his “innovative actions that led to improvement in squad morale and enhanced base eco-functionality.”
Sienna’s office did not have a window, but it did have a skylight. Once the moldering mops and leaking bottles of Mr. Clean were gone, it was dignified if not specious.
Bryan was just about to drop in and tell her he’d confirmed the round-robin shoot-off match with the staff sergeant in charge of the 2,000-meter range. However, as it always seemed to, the military had other plans for them.
He nearly ran into her in the doorway. She was animated as all get-out.
“Sarge, this Request for Forces just came in. From a Department of Defense branch I’ve never heard of called the Adaptive Execution Office,” Sienna said, irony in her voice. It was their old friends at DARPA calling.
She sent details to Bryan’s forearm screen. A mission was definitely on. Exactly what? TBA, as per usual.
“Rex, Ortiz, Whitebread, Nobu, listen up,” he said. “We got us another gig! Aren’t we the luckiest Dogs? Gotta be OM in twenty-three minutes or they’ll give it to MARSOC or SEALS. Do we want Marines or Navy to steal our medals, snatch the honor and glory of a mission well accomplished right out from under our noses?”
“Heck no, Sarge!”
“All right. By the way, T-Rex, you’re in luck. You wanted to go someplace cooler.” Bryan forwarded on to everyone the mission destination and the requirement to bring milspec long underwear. “How’s Antarctica sound?”
12
SIX MONTHS AGO
人類+ 地点 (HUMAN+ SECTION)
SHENNONG WELL-BEING COMPLEX, SHANGHAI
I couldn’t afford the potted plant here, Bryan concluded.
He sat, checking out his room through goggles that were attached to screws in his skull. They didn’t hurt at all and made sure the gadgets monitoring his regularly scheduled eye implant upgrade didn’t budge.
“You have been here before, Mr. Byron,” an almost-definitely woman said. She—probably not he—was wrapped in red surgical cloth from head to toe. “This bonsai tree has been with you since your first visit. This is very good.”
Shennong was a private hospital that made NASA look like a while-you-wait car-repair joint. He’d been coming here for ten years to see the world’s leading cyber-optics specialist, Dr. Ru.
At Shennong, he’s been Mr. Byron for nearly ten years. When he first met Dr. Ru, he had been in a great deal of pain. Not just physical.
A few months after Sienna’s twelfth birthday, the morning blur–outs and the ambush headaches got so bad he couldn’t trust himself to lead his people. His natural eyes, his albino eyes, the ones that could see a single photon of light and deep into ultraviolet and infrared, had been failing.
If he’d mentioned anything to the Army docs, the Pentagon would have cashiered him out as quickly and cheaply as possible. The military was his whole life. He could predict Sienna heading that way too, following her adoptive parents Annalies and Dr. McKnight. For him not to be there for her would have been the worst prospect of all.
For a few days his head had felt like it would crack open. The world was either too bright, like when your sunglasses fall off, or too dim, like during an eclipse. He was low.
He was so desperate he was ready to ask a sixteen-year-old delinquent for advice. The Bryan family had a mission that helped troubled youth. Over the years, quite a few kids had come from Chicago, NYC, and Los Angeles to North Carolina. Young offenders spent the summer baling hay and annoying cows.
This one guy from Compton was exceptional in an underhanded sort of way. He had rigged the chicken coops so hens would lay extra eggs. Then, every night, he snuck out, grabbed the eggs and sold them to an organic grocer in Fayetteville.
A twisted, sneaky mind like that might be able to help. Bryan needed to come up with a way to buy some time, see if the symptoms would go away on their own.
But before he stooped to further corrupting an accomplished sinner, he had one last idea. He applied for a job.
It said “Nova Praetorii Protective Services” on the card. They were a small and well-regarded private security firm based in London. E
xactly the place an experienced enlisted soldier might make an application to cash in on their hard-earned skillset. They flew him to England for an interview, then politely but firmly rejected his application.
At the same time, a man named Thaddeus Byron was hired at Nova Praetorii under their usual cloud of secrecy.
A few weeks later, Bryan was in Shanghai. The leading cyborg tissue surgeon had read about the case of an unnamed patient with incredible vision. The article had been written by an eye doctor who supported his parents’ ministry.
At the same time, a charity dedicated to helping albinos with relocation and prosthetics received a large endowment that offered to pay for the necessary ocular implants. They were, coincidentally, based in London.
As far as the hospital was concerned, he was Mr. Byron, and his account was paid in advance. As far as DoD and the Army knew, a UN Foundation partner NGO had sponsored a serviceman’s medical treatment, which was millions of dollars in excess of what the VA would spring for. Special ops soldiers habitually traveled under assumed names on account of the growing list of bounties offered for their random assassinations. His cover story was solid.
Shennong Center was unique. The main building was built to resemble a human eye. The exterior walls curved to form the arch of an eyebrow and orbital socket. Behind who knew how many acres of glass, dozens of open-sided levels stretched. Everywhere there were working bots.
Small bot climbers with backplates shaped and painted like leaves pulled themselves up hanging vines. They clipped off dead leaves and sprayed nutrient mist onto air plants that had no root system and didn’t need to be in soil at all.
Larger acrobatic-looking mechanoids scaled the open spaces between floors. They looked like a cross between a Mr. Slinky toy and a metal bedframe. These served to augment the elevators and passages inside the walls, delivering bedding and what looked like nonessential supplies to each room.
The air also buzzed with regimented streams of flying drones. These flitted in and out from a dispensary about twenty floors up. From what Bryan had gathered over the years, these mainly delivered medicine. All lined up and hovering, they looked like metallic hummingbirds waiting their turn to visit an aviary.
