The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  “I understand.”

  I look back at the truck. Troy is still in the cab. Specialist Fernandez and Private Antonio climb in with him. Their assignment is to escort Troy as he drives the truck back the way we came, and to rendezvous with Sergeant Nolan if that’s possible. Kendrick stands by the open door, looking up at Fernandez. “Do what Guidance tells you,” he reminds them, speaking over gen-com. “And do not call attention to yourselves.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kendrick gives them a thumbs-up. Then he closes the door, and steps away.

  As the truck pulls out, thirteen of us are left behind.

  “Damn,” Ransom says over gen-com. “I was hoping we’d get to play with those big guns.”

  “Still lots of fun ahead,” Moon reminds him.

  “Ass-kicking fun,” the colonel says, as he looks us over with the empty face of his black visor. “We have two advantages tonight. One is that our enemy is distracted. The citizens of Texas have turned out to be less enthusiastic about secession than the TIA hoped, so their leaders are a little busy tonight, crushing popular dissent. Two, the TIA believes they’ve already won the war. They assume the knife they’re holding to our throat is sharp enough that the US Army won’t dare fight back. That’s never a safe assumption.”

  Soft, assured laughter runs through the ranks.

  “So check the cinches on your dead sister, get your pack squared, and make sure you have your facemask and oh-two cartridge at hand.”

  At this last remark, an uneasy murmur runs through the gathered troops. Kendrick ignores it. “Do not use your facemask before you are instructed to do so. We are going a long way down and we can’t tank-breathe all the way. Now—we are only six kilometers from our target. I know every one of you is tired, and I don’t give a damn. You either win this war tonight or you die trying. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, one of a chorus of soft, affirmative mumbles, because none of us is stupid enough to yell, out here in a primal silence flawed only by the occasional lowing of a cow.

  “Do not veer from the route Guidance has given us,” Kendrick warns. “If there’s a rattlesnake in your way, tread on it. Don’t go around, or you run the risk of triggering a perimeter camera. Got it? Let’s go.”

  “Lucky thirteen,” Tuttle whispers off-com as I slip past him on my way to take point.

  “Damn straight,” I whisper back.

  It’s up to the thirteen remaining soldiers in our squad to win this war.

  ~~~

  We go single file, the LCS falling in behind me as I follow the highlighted trail marked out by Guidance. After the first couple of klicks, I startle a cow that was chewing its cud in the moon-cast shadow of a tree. It snorts and takes off at a slow run, causing a commotion among its friends.

  I don’t like it. If anyone inside Black Cross is paying attention to the perimeter cameras, they might want to know why a cow is agitated—but shooting the cow would guarantee more attention.

  “Delphi?”

  “Here.”

  “No devil eyes looking down on us, right?”

  “They do have a drone, but it’s on the ground. Equipment malfunction.”

  “Handy coincidence.”

  She doesn’t answer, but I’m more impressed than ever with the preliminary work Intelligence has done.

  Soon, all that stands between us and the hill is a single grove of scrubby trees and a final 400 meters of open range.

  Not far from the grove are six cows. One watches us intently. It’s bigger than the others, and I’ve got a strong suspicion it’s a bull.

  “Heads-up for El Toro,” I say over gen-com.

  Kendrick comes back with, “Ignore El Toro. Do not break your line.”

  Then Lissa speaks. I know the voice I’m hearing can’t be real, but her words are as clear in my ears as the first time she said them in the hospital: Don’t die, okay?

  God is back, messing with my brain.

  I stop where I am, raising a hand to warn Tuttle, who’s following behind me. “Hold up.”

  This is a bad move as far as the bull is concerned. Interpreting our sudden halt as a challenge, he snorts, lowers his head, and paws at the ground.

  Tuttle crowds up to my shoulder, craning to see why I’ve stopped. “You got something?”

  Kendrick wants to know the same thing. “What is it, Shelley?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The bull snorts again, and then he trots slowly toward us, testing our response, his tail switching. It comes to me that someone else is watching him, and we need to get the hell out of sight before that gaze finds us.

  “Drop flat!” I order. “Down now!” And despite the threat of the bull, the entire line obeys, Kendrick included. I hear creaks and crunches and soft thuds as they go down. I drop too, and so does Tuttle. The bull stops, puzzled by the sudden disappearance of his foe. I lift my head to look through the trees, where I can just see the target hill.

  Through the screen of vegetation, I see a muzzle flash. It repeats three times. I hear the slugs hit flesh—and the bull goes down on his knees with a blood-curdling bellow. The sound of the shots arrives, and the startled cows take off running. In between the bellowing of the bull I make out distant voices, whooping in victory. Then two more shots, and the bull goes all the way down with a grunt. Its labored breathing is still loud in the night’s quiet, but it’s not bellowing anymore.

  “Delphi?”

  “A delayed report was just forwarded from Intelligence,” she says, sounding quietly furious. “Two Uther-Fens are doing a walk-about on the hill.”

  “Tuttle,” Kendrick says. “We need a sharpshooter. Go forward with the L. T. and set it up.”

  Tuttle and I creep into the trees, following the path Guidance has chosen for us. That the mercenaries are shooting cattle tells me they are bored and unsupervised, and may not have a clear concept of the extent of the war unfolding around them. It also tells me that they’ve got nightvision, and we do not want to give them a more tempting target. We stop just before we reach the other side of the grove.

  As I help Tuttle set up his weapon on its tripod, the Uther-Fen gun goes off again and another cow starts bellowing, this time off to the east. Kendrick tramps up behind us. Opening a solo link, he asks me, “What just happened?”

  “I hallucinated a voice, sir. It was a warning.”

  “Damn it, are you telling me that Thelma Sheridan immolated thousands, took down the Cloud, and commenced a war—all to get rid of the Red, but it’s still out there, bleeding through the ruins?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lucky for us,” Delphi whispers, just to me.

  Kendrick makes a growl of disgust. “Get yourself ready, Lieutenant. You’re going in first.”

  “I want Ransom behind me.”

  “Do it.”

  I switch to gen-com. “Ransom, you’ve got ten seconds. Move up to the front of the line. Stay on the ground until you’re into the trees. Follow when I go.”

  “Yes sir, L. T.!” he says with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever.

  I keep my gaze on the hill. The twisting, gnarled tree trunks obscure our infrared profile, but they don’t block my view. I can see the recessed doors of Black Cross, and on the slope immediately above them, the two Uther-Fen cow killers—tiny figures standing a few feet apart, one with binoculars and one with a rifle. The shooter isn’t using a tripod to steady his weapon. No wonder it took several shots to drop the bull.

  Tuttle gets down on his belly. The angel has provided the exact distance and elevation for his shots, while Kendrick uses an atmospheric gauge to measure air temperature and wind speed. One of the Uther-Fens is going down for sure. The only question is whether Tuttle can shift his aim fast enough to take down the second one.

  Kendrick addresses the LCS: “Be ready to advance on my command.”

  Tuttle’s goal is to drop the two cow killers without a fuss, so that no one on the inside is alerted—but whether or not
that happens, we will go on to hit the target fast and hard. Even if the defenders know we’re coming, they won’t have more than a couple of minutes to prepare—and it’s in the confusion of battle that we’ll have our best, our only chance at victory.

  “I’m clearing your visor,” Delphi says.

  Maps and icons vanish. Nothing left to impede my view of the ground in front of me when I charge the hill.

  I hear someone move up behind me. I assume it’s Ransom, but I don’t turn to look, I don’t speak. I keep my attention focused on the hill as Tuttle pops his first shot. His second shot goes off two seconds later. I see one Uther-Fen go down as the round blows a crater in his chest. Tuttle’s second shot hasn’t even hit yet when Kendrick says, “Go, Shelley.”

  Tuttle can shoot over my head if he needs to pop another round.

  I launch myself out of the grove at an all-out sprint. I still don’t know the status of the second Uther-Fen, and I don’t know for sure if Ransom is behind me, but I trust that he is. I trust my squad to cover me, and I trust Delphi to let me know if something changes.

  I’m halfway to the hill when she gives me the news: “Two confirmed kills, but one of the bodies is visible to the security camera positioned above the doors.”

  I don’t waste breath to answer. Nothing left to talk about. The defenders are aware of us, but it doesn’t matter. Either we slam the TIA now, or we die.

  Delphi starts counting down the distance I still have to go before I’m close enough to use my grenade launcher. “Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty. Twenty—

  “Door is opening,” she says. “Get down!”

  I keep going, squeezing one word out of my heaving lungs. “Count!”

  “In range! Now!”

  I skid to one knee, bringing my M-CL1a to my shoulder to stabilize it. I’m not looking at the target. A blazing gold point has ignited on my visor, and the only thing that matters to me is covering that point with my targeting circle. I shift my aim. The circle slides onto the point. The AI pulls the trigger, and a grenade launches from the tube beneath the rifle barrel.

  “Drop, Shelley!”

  I do it, going down flat on my belly, pressing my visor into the dust of an unpaved road. I link to Kendrick’s helmet cam in time to see the explosion. The grenade was meant to blow the doors open, but someone from inside opened a door just as I lined up my shot—so the AI programmed the grenade to reach the interior.

  The explosion goes off behind the doors, blowing them wide open, and launching a body into the air like a ragdoll. A cylindrical object goes spinning up through the fireball.

  “What is that?” I whisper to Delphi.

  “An RPG launcher that was being aimed at you.”

  Not something I want to think about.

  I take off again. This time, Ransom is right beside me. We race each other, closing the distance to the shattered doors. Two bodies are lying in the debris. I fire a round into each of them to make sure they’re all the way gone. The stink hits me as I jump over them. It’s god-awful—stomach contents, explosive residue, and burning flesh.

  I wave Ransom to one side of the door. I take the other. Shoving the barrel of my M-CL1a around the corner, I sweep it in a fast arc so my AI can get a look at the interior. Then I do a slow reverse scan so I can see what’s there. I make out only one enemy. He’s down on the floor, his smoldering body crumpled in a corner.

  “Clear to advance,” Delphi says.

  I slip inside, with Ransom right behind me.

  We didn’t use an RPG to open the doors because we didn’t want to take the chance of a cave-in at the Level 1 staging area. The grenade alone has left the utilitarian room glowing with heat, reeking with fumes, and nearly empty of oxygen. It’s tempting to reach for the facemask secured against my chest, but Kendrick hasn’t ordered us to use oxygen yet, and we’ve got a long way to go.

  Two rounds go into the downed merc, and then I move to the steel fire door at the top of the stairs, positioning myself beside the latch. “You’re going to open it,” I tell Ransom.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He backs up against the wall on the hinged side of the door

  I’ve got my weapon in one hand, the stock braced against the hip strut of my dead sister, ready to fire. In my other hand I’ve got a fragmentation grenade. If the door is locked, we’re going to have to blow it open and that’s going to slow us down. I hope it’s not locked. Ransom takes the handle in his gloved hand. “Ready, L. T.?”

  “Just wide enough for the grenade,” I warn him. “Then get it shut and get the fuck out of here.”

  He shoves the handle down and pulls back. The door is not locked. I trigger the grenade, then toss it through the gap into the stairwell. Bullets hammer the door’s inner face, knocking bubbles into the steel. Ransom can’t get it shut against the force of impact. “Kick it,” I tell him.

  I fire down into the gap. Ransom takes a step back. There’s hesitation in the defensive fusillade. He uses the moment to launch a kick backed up by the full force of his dead sister’s leg strut. The door booms shut. “Get out!” I scream at him.

  He launches himself at the entrance, and in one bound he’s through it and outside. I’m right behind him.

  The grenade goes off. It’s a double explosion—boom, boom!—one more concussion than I can credit to my little frag. The shock vibrates through my footplates. When we look inside, the steel fire door is on the other side of the room, blown off its hinges by the concussion and hurled into the concrete wall.

  “Idiots tried to blow us up,” Ransom says. “Blew themselves up instead.”

  “Looks that way.”

  My guess is they launched a grenade at the open door, but it never cleared the stairwell. It’s going to be seared and shredded meat down there.

  I scramble back to the blackened door frame and stick the muzzle of my weapon around the corner. There are two bodies on the landing below. No live targets in sight.

  “Clear to descend,” Delphi says quietly.

  Two or three flights down, I’m going to lose my connection to the angel. “Bye, Delphi,” I whisper, and I jump all the way to the blood-slick first landing, letting the shocks of my dead sister take the impact as I come down between the two bodies. I back up against the hot concrete wall, getting out of the way as Ransom comes down behind me.

  A glance at the map shows Vanessa Harvey at the top of the stairs, Jayden Moon a step behind her, and the rest of the LCS still coming in.

  I lean around to look down to the next landing. I don’t see anyone, so I pivot and jump again, with Ransom following. Our tactic is to move fast, and deprive the enemy of a chance to set charges—but Level 2 is deep underground. We’ve got six flights of stairs to transit and we will meet enemy fire before we get that far.

  Blue Parker is huddled somewhere downstairs. He knows we’re coming. I try to imagine what’s going through his head. The nukes are his only leverage, so I don’t think he’ll blow them until there’s no doubt left that he’s going to lose. Even then—well, he’s a true believer. Reality can smack up against a mind like that and bounce off without effect—which is fine with me. The longer he takes to understand what is happening to his glorious revolution, the more time we have to win.

  Ransom and I hit the third landing and we’re met by gunfire: a maelstrom of bullets pounding into the walls, the roof, and the base of the concrete stairs above us, spewing fragments in every direction.

  I throw myself back into the corner. Ransom drops to his belly. Vanessa Harvey jumps down from the landing above, turns—and a bullet hits her visor. She slams back against the wall, just a meter away from me, sliding down to a sitting position. Her visor is dented and spider-webbed, but it’s not perforated, so no bullet is lodged in her brain. Her chest heaves as blood runs from behind her visor onto her chest. “Talk to me, Harvey,” I say.

  “Fucking broken nose,” she growls over gen-com.

  Kendrick’s voice cuts in, “Clear the way, Shelley.”
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  No way out but forward.

  I check my display. My link to Guidance is gone. Communication is helmet-to-helmet. My onboard AI will still help me aim, but without oversight it won’t fire. So that duty falls to me.

  I put my finger beside the trigger for the grenade launcher. “Fire in the hole!” I announce over gen-com. I don’t know how far the signal will travel inside the stairwell, but my nearest soldiers will know what’s coming.

  I jump across the landing, jam the muzzle of my weapon down past the curve of the rail and, without looking, I launch the grenade. Ransom grabs my pack and pulls me down to the floor beside Harvey. The grenade goes off.

  Only the helmet keeps me from losing my hearing in the concrete confines of the stairwell. A wall of fire shoots past just above us, rising up the chimney of the stairwell. On the landing above figures drop flat and dive for corners.

  The fireball lasts only a couple of seconds. Silence follows it, but again we’ve managed to burn out most of the oxygen. No choice now but to get all the way down to Level 2 as fast as we can.

  “Get Harvey’s arm,” I tell Ransom.

  We haul her to her feet. “I’m good!” she snaps and, twisting free of my grip, she jumps through the fumes, down to the next landing. I follow, and Ransom comes after me. With no active resistance, it takes only seconds to reach Level 2. The concrete walls are cracked from the blast, and there are two more bodies on the floor, both wearing black Uther-Fen uniforms. The fire door is askew in its frame.

  Our goal is Level 3, but I want air, so I kick the fire door open, covering the hallway beyond with my weapon—but no one’s in sight. I pick up an empty magazine from the floor and use it to jam the door’s hinges.

  This is the residential level. Doors line the hall, all of them closed. Kendrick jumps down from the flight above, landing behind me. He catches Harvey by her arm strut before she can take off again. “You’re staying here.” He shoves her toward the open door to get her out of the way as Moon jumps down. “Hoang! Johnson! Assist Harvey to secure Level 2.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harvey says, biting off each word. She’s furious at being taken out of the action.