by Linda Nagata
This shouldn’t be fun, but when I look around, I can’t help grinning. Matt Ransom, Jaynie Vasquez, Mandy Flynn, Samuel Tuttle, Vanessa Harvey, and Jayden Moon—they’re all here. With Kendrick and me, we’ve got two-thirds of the surviving veterans of Black Cross. Nolan wasn’t with us on the assault—he stayed back, tasked with hiding the evidence of the checkpoint firefight—but he did his part. He’s one of us.
There’s only one person present whom I don’t know: a tall, broad-shouldered, white-haired man. My overlay logs his face, but I’m still locked down and can’t launch a search to identify him. Way out here, there’s probably no cell network anyway, but Kendrick introduces us. “Shelley, this is Colonel Trevor Rawlings, retired from the US Army after thirty-two years. The colonel is handling the mission’s initial staging operation and will be our first point of contact throughout the mission.”
Rawlings offers his hand and I take it. “It’s a brave choice you’ve made being here, Lieutenant. I commend you for it.”
“It’s the same choice we’ve all made, sir.”
The lodge is decorated with a clean minimalism—white walls, blond woods, and steel accents—but the effect is overwhelmed by the quantity of gear and weapons laid out on the heated floors and the honey-colored tables. I make my way around the room, trading handshakes and greetings. We’re not used to seeing one another in civilian clothes. We exchange doubtful looks and try not to laugh. Ransom catches me by surprise in a bear hug, so I slug him in the shoulder, which he seems to appreciate.
Then I turn to Jaynie, who greets me with a coy smile. “Episode three, sir?”
“That’s what I hear. Why the hell are you here, Jaynie?”
Of all the C -FHEIT veterans, Jaynie’s participation surprised me the most. She’d been on track for officer candidate school, and in another world, in some happier alternate history, she would have become an exemplary officer. But in our world? Her career was probably dead before it started, fatally tainted by her association with us.
Her smile widens. “Colonel Kendrick promised me a big bonus.”
That takes me by surprise. “You’re doing this for bonus money?”
“Money, sir?” Beneath the rim of her army skullcap, her face is a picture of wide-eyed innocence. “I’m doing this for the bonus of slamming a gold-shitting DC.”
I shake my head. “Shit, Jaynie. I thought you were the sensible one.”
Her good humor switches off. She eyes me with that questioning look I saw all too often in the few days we spent together at Fort Dassari. “Is the Red still haunting you, sir?”
“It’s still out there, Jaynie, if that’s what you’re asking, but it hasn’t messed with me since Black Cross . . . not in a way I’ve noticed.”
“Kendrick said people are working on it. Not just here in Coma-land. Outside too, where there’s still good information flow. But you want to know what I think?”
“Yeah,” I say in surprise. “I do.” Jaynie doesn’t offer her opinion often, and she’s a hell of a smart person.
“I think most of the people who know anything about this stuff don’t want to get rid of the Red. They want to control it, because whoever figures out first how to do that gets to run things.”
I nod. This makes sense to me.
She goes on. “Even if you couldn’t control it . . . if you could analyze what it does and predict what it might do next, then you’d know when to launch your assault and when to hold it back.”
I flash on Lissa, submerged somewhere in a secure facility, trying to understand the Red. Kendrick advised me to learn to live with the Red . . . but Jaynie’s right. It would be a better trick to learn to use it.
• • • •
We will be operating as an LCS, so the equipment gathered in the room includes everything necessary to rig an LCS soldier in the Alaskan winter—insulated camo, insulated footwear, self-heating gloves, armor, helmets, HITRs, ammo, explosives, and of course, exoskeletons. There’s even an angel, adrift above the lodge, waiting to accompany us on the mission. All of the equipment provided to us is new, and none of it is army. None of it is even marked as belonging to any particular outfit. We will be anonymous, just like the organization behind First Light.
The only army equipment the squad will be using are the skullcaps. Everyone brought their own. I have my skullnet of course, and the robot legs, but those are part of me now.
“Hey, Shelley,” Ransom says. “Take a look.”
He’s got a small plastic box, maybe eight by four inches in area and three inches high. He’s careful to keep it level. Perforations run around the sides. He holds it in front of a light while I peer inside. Something’s moving in there. I hear the skittering of feet.
“Robo-rats,” Kendrick says, taking the box. “Three of them—though whether they’ll survive the cold, we don’t know.”
The temperature is predicted to drop to zero before dawn.
Shima helps us organize the gear, making sure everyone gets the equipment sized for them. I dress in insulated fatigues printed in a white-and-gray camo pattern. My backpack is the same material. I load it carefully, every item precisely placed. We’ve been provided with abundant ammunition and explosives, so I take as much as I can practically carry. Kendrick orders each of us to take three days’ worth of rations, just in case. We’re also provided with a summer-weight uniform, to change into sometime on the flight to Africa.
My primary weapon is still an M-CL1a HITR, but Rawlings has gifts for all of us: compact Berettas, just in case. I hold mine under a light and examine it. There’s no serial number, nothing to trace it back to our benefactor.
Only a few of us are putting our names on this action.
I have no idea how deep this conspiracy runs, how wide its reach might be. Kendrick said he’s at the core of the organization, but the only thing he would say about the money was that it came from private sources.
I look up, to find Rawlings watching me.
He nods at the gun. “You’re asking yourself who’s financing us. Who paid for all this equipment? Who could afford it?”
I would have sworn everyone in the room was focused on packing, but as he says these words, silence falls.
Better to clear up the issue now, than to go forward burdened with doubt. “It would make some sense if we were being outfitted by a rival defense contractor.”
“It would make sense,” Rawlings agrees. “But there is no corporate money in this room. We are funded by the donations of individuals who still believe we should have a government by the people, for the people—not one hijacked by the global elite. For three years we’ve done nothing but talk and plan and talk some more, but by God, the talking is done. When the mechanisms of justice fail, justice must be served by other means. That’s our mission, Lieutenant. That’s your mission.”
It’s easy to be cynical when pretty words are deployed, but I believe Rawlings is sincere, and besides, I’ve already made my choice, I’m all in, so his pretty words sound right to me. “Yes, sir. We are here to take Thelma Sheridan to trial.” I return the Beretta to its clip-on holster, stowing it in the top of my pack. “That’s all that matters now.”
Rawlings nods his approval. “Keep your goals clear and you’ll have a chance to achieve them.”
Kendrick calls me aside. Shima joins us, carrying a tablet. Kendrick says, “Shima’s got software for your overlay that will let you link it into gen-com. Treat it as a backup system. We’ve also authorized the drone to accept the standard feed from your overlay, and to relay links from you to Colonel Rawlings.”
“Yes, sir.”
Shima looks up from her tablet. “While the mission is under way, the angel will be the only point of contact for your overlay, and it will only link you to Colonel Rawlings. There’s no need to worry about the security of the connection. Just like with the helmets, all your communication
s will be encrypted and anonymized before they’re passed through a satellite link.”
She slides an icon on the tablet. A link wakes up in my overlay. “Connection to the angel confirmed,” she says.
“Gen-com?”
“Coming up.”
I see a new icon wink into existence. “Got it.”
Shima sends me a sound test; I send one to her. “Working,” she concludes.
“Good,” Kendrick says. “Now shut it off. We will be maintaining EM silence at the start.”
We strap into the dead sisters that have been provided for us, adjusting the length of the struts and testing all the mechanisms. Our helmets go on next. I link to my skullnet, to my HITR, to the angel waiting outside in the night, and to everyone else in the squad. Only Delphi is missing. We’ll be operating without Guidance—but then we had to do that inside Black Cross too.
We’re ready to go. We shake hands with Anne Shima and Colonel Rawlings, who says, “Godspeed.”
Then we file outside. We’re a rogue militia, nine in number. That’s more than I had at Dassari. I tell myself it’s enough.
It has to be.
• • • •
We leave the lodge at 2107. The sky is cloudy, keeping the temperature above five degrees. We’re lucky there’s no wind. Twenty-seven kilometers lie between us and the Apocalypse Fortress. I put Jaynie out front. It’s a good decision; she sets a determined pace. We stay a couple hundred meters inland, paralleling the coast, going single file and keeping under the trees when we can, but snow is predicted for later tonight, so I’m not too worried about leaving a trail.
Despite the still air, it’s fucking cold. The cyborg legs aren’t affected, but they’re affecting me. They’re a heat dump. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing snow boots and insulated fatigues. Without body heat, without blood circulating into the legs, they take on the temperature of the air from the foot up to the knee. Above the knee, I feel like I have rods of ice jammed into the stumps of my legs.
At least I’ll never get frostbite in my toes.
For most of the first hour we hear wolves howling, not all that far away. It’s a haunting sound that keeps me alert. But when snow starts falling, the night goes quiet and my senses contract. Night vision shows me where to step, and it shows me Vanessa Harvey six paces ahead, but that’s all I can see. For the next two hours we stride through a collage of trees and snow that looks so much the same everywhere we go, it’s easy to feel like we’ve gone nowhere at all.
But high above us, an angel watches. If anyone wanders more than a step or two off the line, a red warning dot pulses on the map of our route that I keep projected onto my visor. So no one can get lost—but going mad from boredom? By the time we’ve done sixteen K it seems like a real possibility.
At twenty-two K, the angel detects an electronic signature that doesn’t belong to us.
We all drop into a crouch, our weapons ready.
Arrays of electronic sensors keep watch in the Apocalypse Forest, on guard for movement, heat, electromagnetic events . . . but the engineer, Lucius Perez, controls them, and tonight, for a window of a few hours, his task was to switch them off.
If he’s failed to do that, our mission is doomed.
My heart is hammering as I wait for the angel’s analysis of the signal. I miss Delphi’s voice; I miss Guidance.
An update scrolls across the screen of my visor: The transmission came from a small fishing boat passing just off the coast. With luck, it has nothing to do with us.
• • • •
Midnight finds us clambering around the foot of a ridge, just steps from the ocean. Snow is still falling, accumulating on the steep slope and weighing heavily on the trees that tower above us. We go quietly, because we’re close.
Before long, the coast levels out again, and soon we come to the verge of a road covered in deep snow. Jaynie raises a hand, and the signal to stop gets passed back down the line. We’re staying off-com, passively receiving only, to minimize our EM signature.
I make my way to the front, with Kendrick following. We stand with Jaynie, looking back toward the ridge we just skirted. Two long switchbacks climb its side. Up there somewhere, the Apocalypse Fortress looks out on the sea, while in the other direction, the road follows the coast for eight hundred meters to the airfield.
I hear waves lapping against the shore, but they’re not loud enough to drown out a distant rumble of engines. Looking through the angel’s camera eyes, I’m expecting to see a snowcat maybe, or a plane daring the snowstorm. But the rumbling engines belong to two robotic snowplows driving up and down the runway at midnight, working to keep it clear.
• • • •
We stormed Black Cross because on that night every minute mattered. If we have to, we’ll storm the Apocalypse Fortress too—but with our ally Lucius Perez helping, we’re hoping we can lure Thelma Sheridan outside. Finding a traitor to roll back security is always a factor in the best assault plans.
• • • •
Kendrick gets the robo-rats out of his pack and hands the box to me. “Take them up to the top of the ridge. Don’t worry about getting close to the house. The risk isn’t worth it. Release them, and get back down here before the snow stops.”
I debate who to take with me. Ransom is too big for sneaking around. Flynn is too small. Kendrick needs both sergeants with him, so I tap Moon on the shoulder—he’s closest—and crook my finger. On the map displayed on my visor, the angel draws me a path to follow. I look at it, and feel the hair rise on the back of my neck.
Signaling Moon to wait, I wade through the snow until I can tap Kendrick on the shoulder. “Colonel.”
He turns the blank face of his visor in my direction. “Why are you still here?”
“We’re not hooked into Guidance, and we’re passively receiving only, so who the hell told the angel to plot me a route up this ridge?”
Several seconds pass before he says, “We need to move. It looks like a good route . . . and if the Red’s looking out for you, all the better.”
He’s right, although I can’t forget it was the Red that walked me out the door at Black Cross, and not because it was looking out for me. I think it wanted a witness to the last moments of those two fighter pilots and I was the only available option. I know the Red is not on my side or anyone else’s, but I’ve trusted it in the past and lived, so what the hell.
I grab Moon again and we follow the plotted route.
Our dead sisters make it an easy climb.
• • • •
A light comes into sight above us as we near the top of the ridge. I signal Moon to slow down. We creep another three or four meters. Ahead of us the trees thin out so that I can see the light is coming from the curved bank of windows on the sea side of the Apocalypse Fortress. There are no blinds, no privacy tint. I can see inside to where a fire burns in a hearth, white in night vision. Someone sits in a cushioned chair beside it, head bent, reading a tablet. I imagine it to be Sheridan, peacefully contemplating the deaths of millions while her husband, Carl Vanda, recovers from his injuries in a hospital bed somewhere in an underground room.
Moon puts his helmet close to mine. “You want to go farther?”
“No.” I can’t risk being seen. If we lose the element of surprise the mission will fail, leaving us to face a robust counterattack, with no means to evacuate from the Apocalypse Forest. “We’ll let the rats go here.”
If Kendrick knows how to control the rats, he hasn’t told me. I don’t know anything about them. I’m just hoping they’re trained to perform certain behaviors. We kneel on the snow, set the box down between us, and open it. Three rats show their snuffling noses. I tip the box, dumping them onto the snow. Just like the rats at Black Cross, each has a camera button between its eyes and a whip-wire antenna sticking out of the back of its skull. The rats will violate the EM
silence of our operation when they uplink to the angel, but in the vicinity of the house, with all its electronic equipment, their signals won’t stand out.
Watching them, I’m not sure they’ll make it to the house. They really don’t like the cold. One stands on its hind legs; another runs onto Moon’s boot. “Son of a bitch! ” he whispers as he shakes it off and stumbles backward.
“Don’t step on them!”
They cluster close together, shivering.
Should I try to take them closer to the house? I crouch, and cautiously extend my gloved hand. They don’t act shy, so I pick one up. Its head turns; its tiny black eyes fix on the light from the building and I hear a faint squeak. “Hey, I think it’s attracted to the light.”
I put it down again. From the ground it can’t see the house lights, but it must remember where they are, because as soon as it feels the snow underfoot, it takes off, scampering away up the hill. The other two rats follow.
Movement draws my eye to the side of the house. Is there something in the shadows? Even with night vision, I can’t really make it out; it’s just motion, an undefined shape. I switch to the angel’s view, but the drone is near the airfield, too far away to get a good look at the house.
“Do you see that?” I whisper to Moon.
“Is that a dog? It looks like a huge dog . . . only weird.”
At least there’s no wind to carry our scent uphill.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Moving as quietly as we can, we retreat.
• • • •
We’re halfway down the ridge when I hear a loud crack from below: the snap of a branch breaking under the weight of snow? Or a muffled shot? Concerned that we’ve been discovered, I hold up a hand for Moon to stop. Gripping an icy branch, I lean out over the slope to look down. The angel has drifted partway back from the airfield. It tracks each soldier by sight, marking their positions on my display, whether or not they’re hidden beneath the trees. All seems calm. Only Nolan, Tuttle, and Flynn are in motion, moving away from the road at an easy walk—and then I make out a glimmering thread strung across the road.
