by Melissa Good
“And if it doesn’t?”
Bricker shrugged. “Then it’s just a failed experiment. We send it back and get it wiped, and we look elsewhere. But at least it gives you something to toss at this ops agent of yours. Maybe it’ll be a challenge.”
Stephan sighed. Then he lifted a hand and let it fall. “What the hell. Sure. Worst can happen is it won’t work. I don’t think we can put Jess in the field right now anyway. Psych says she’s not fit for it.”
“That’s the spirit, Bricker said. “Did a good clean up job in all that mess I hear.”
Bock nodded. “Took out a whole cell. Killed two dozen including the infiltrator and ID’d the locale for the strike team. Made a very big hole in the ground.”
“Impressive,” Bricker said. “I can see why you want to keep the op around.”
“I do, John. I really do.”
Bricker studied him. “I’m really not trying to be a dick, Stephan. I just want us to survive. Know what I mean?”
Bock sighed. “I know. It just seems like it gets harder every damn day.”
JESS FELT THE steady patter of rain against her skin as she stood in the sentryway, leaning her elbows on the armored rail and looking out.
The sky, as always, was dark gray, filled with layered clouds and allowing only the filtered, muted light to reach the surface that spread out ahead of her.
Gray and black, dark greens and ochres. The cold wind blew against her face, bringing the smell of brine and damp rock to her nose and she exhaled, absorbing the surroundings of home.
The citadel was built into a granite cliff, protected by the hard, basement rock that surrounded it. At the base of the cliff on one side was the endless span of the sea, it’s surge flowing through cut tunnels that generated power, and into caverns where they harvested what the tide brought them.
On the other side, rocky ground interspersed with gravel, and the odd patch of lichen spread as far as the eye could see.
There were no trees or plants, though once there had been. There were no people. It had been generations since homes and buildings were seen anywhere and now you had to look hard to even discern the faint outlines of what had been roads, and the odd lumps of rubble that had been civilization.
It was bleak. But it had been this bleak her whole life, and rather than find it depressing Jess always felt a sense of peace looking out over this vastness of solitude, tucked into a fold of what had been called the Appalachian range, in what long ago was called Pennsylvania.
Here at least it was quiet, and safe, their outpost providing defense for the eastern coastline all the way up to where North Base took over near Quebec.
Once upon a time this had been a place of life and plenty. Back in the day when everyone had argued over the impact of humanity on the planet, and how they could somehow fix the effect they were having on it.
Back in the day, when there had been lifestyles, and money, and religion to argue over. Back when they’d thought humanity ruled the world and it was humanity’s decisions that would chart the course of the future.
Everyone thought a disaster would come someday. Almost no one predicted that when it did, humanity would have no part in it, and no control over the results.
One after another, six big volcanos erupted along a crack in the planet’s crust. It was simply a matter of physics after that. Debris in the air turned into clouds that blocked the sun, and in turn spawned more clouds, acid rain they couldn’t escape, or block, or do anything about.
Horrifically, frighteningly fast, how a food chain can collapse. Plants, forests, animals, cultures, and civilization vanished in the blink of a planetary eye, reducing a fertile world to an almost barren bleakness.
Near constant rain. The shifting earth and melting ice making the oceans rise, and coastlines dissolve until the planet was reshaped into a place of restless seas and lifeless rock and vast extinction.
Almost.
The ten percent of humanity that survived had done so because the one great strength of their species was the ability to adapt, and adapt, and adapt again, finding new ways to live, new resources to exploit, and new patterns to fall into.
And so they survived and learned to live again in a hard world where needs were boiled down to stark essentials.
But they were still human, and conflict was so written into the species that even when so few were left, still, there were sides to be taken. Now the conflict wasn’t over ideology or trade, it was over raw resources in a world where access to them meant life or death.
Was there a mind on the other side that had data they needed? They’d go take them. An invention they could exploit? Jess, or someone like her, would be assigned to find a way to locate and retrieve it. Was there someone who, though not useful to them, would give the other side an advantage?
Jess had killed her share of them. There was no sentiment. No compassion. Survival was as raw a master as humanity had ever known.
There could be no open warfare. There were’t enough of them for that. They just fought step by step, in close rooms, or dark tunnels, infiltrating labs, and invading systems. Their lives depended on the sea, and on the hydroponic stations high above circling the world—havens of technology and relative plenty—far removed from the bleak, cloud covered world below.
Jess licked a bit of the rain off her lips. It had stopped being deadly to them generations back, as their biology adapted to the new conditions and so to her it tasted sweet. It dampened her hair and the workout suit she was wearing, cooling her body down from the gym session she’d just completed.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and she took heed of the warning, ducking back inside the armored door and keying it shut behind her. It closed with a compressed thump and she walked along the corridor toward the rad center.
She passed the occasional steadily moving figure in the hall, giving the brief nod of acknowledgement the contact required. Just past the major corridor that held the dining hall and rec area, she turned into one of many half rounded doorways.
It opened as her presence registered and closed behind her as she entered. The light inside altered from neutral to a soft twilight that outlined her as she stripped off her workout suit and set it on the cleaning shelf.
Naked, she moved into the rad room and it switched on, bathing her in a deep ultraviolet glow. She sprawled on a transparent, webbed chair, letting the artificial sunlight cover her skin. She touched the work pad on the arm of the chair and called up the ops report.
The one thing they hadn’t evolved out of, that need for the touch of the sun they no longer saw. Jess rested her elbow on the chair and propped her chin up with it, relaxing in the glow as she caught up on the events of the day.
Her dream of two days past was finally fading. She’d spent a good restful night last night, and was starting to feel almost normal again. The details of the failed raid were fading, along with the scar on her back from the knife.
The trust hadn’t returned though, and Jess was silently gratified when the other ops agents had gone to the top and registered big concerns of their own as to how far they could trust the tech partners they’d been given.
She knew Stephan thought she’d egged them on, and she would have, if they hadn’t come up with it on their own. If it happened to her, they reasoned, it could happen to any of them.
And that was true. The techs were all very uncomfortable, sitting together in the dining hall as the agents in residence gathered at their own, and getting faintly concerned and maybe a little suspicious looks from the rest of the citadel staff.
Not fair. Jess readily conceded. Joshua was the first turned in as far back as anyone knew, and there was no real reason to suspect any of the other techs, but they were suspected anyway.
Tough luck for them. Tougher luck for Stephan, who was now having to deal with far more than just her problem.
It was time for him, and for his boss, to put the thumb down on the council, since it was their process that screwed up. Someone shou
ld pay for it.
But even as she thought it, Jess knew in her guts the finger pointing would eventually deflect fault right back to them, and their group, and her.
Humanity hadn’t changed all that much. Crap, still insistently and never-endingly, rolled downhill.
A soft knock sounded at the door, an anachronistic touch that almost made her smile. “Come,” she called out, hearing the soft click as the vocal systems analyzed her response and acted on it.
The outer door opened and she saw a shadowy form enter, crossing in front of the dim light long enough for her to recognize Stephan’s tall, solid, bulk. “In here.”
He crossed into the sun chamber and sat down on the bench. He was dressed in a workout suit much as she’d been, and his hair was plastered to his head with sweat. “You up for dinner?”
“Sure.” Jess wondered what the pitch was going to be. “What’s up?”
“I’ve just had a crap filled day and I’d like to sit across a plastic table from a good looking woman and talk about trigger ratios and forget it was a crap filled day,” he said, with surprising bluntness. “That’s all.”
Jess looked up from her pad, watching him. He was sprawled on the bench and she read honest exhaustion in his body set. She knew Bricker had been with him most of the morning, and she knew she was probably one of the subjects of the meeting, but she read no dissembling in his face and that surprised her.
Stephan was a friend. But first and foremost, he was her superior. Even though they’d grown up together, been schooled together, and been in service together for years, she had no illusion of where his loyalties lie.
Ah. There were those trust issues again. She smiled briefly. “Sounds good.” She said. “I’ve got backed up rations, want to share a liter of grog?”
His face creased into a responding smile. “You’re starting to sound like your old self.”
Jess considered that. “I’m not sure that old self still lives in here. But I got a decent night’s sleep last night so who knows.”
He nodded. “Know how that feels.” He indicated the light. “Mind if I share your glow? Mine’s being serviced.”
“Feel free.” Jess went back to her pad as he stripped out of his suit and went to the transparent lounge, dropping down onto it and stretching out. The floor and walls were reflective, so every inch of them got some of it and though a necessity, she always found it relaxing.
She and Stephan were relatively alike in looks. They were both tall, and they both had spare, well muscled bodies with well developed arms and shoulders and powerful legs. The same training had stamped them, and though the biological differences were still obvious, they didn’t obscure the fact that here were two people who had come out of the same mold.
Might even have been sibs, once upon a time.
Jess wondered how long it would take for him to corner her into whatever it was Bricker wanted.
She’d already decided to refuse. What would the threat be? What would the price be?
Did she really even care?
“Anything new on the boards?” Stephan asked, his eyes closed.
“Nothing yet” Jess smiled grimly. “Anything new from the top?”
“Nothing yet.”
DEV WOKE TO the soft chime of her scheduler, opening her eyes to find the soft neutral colored interior of her sleeping pod surrounding her. The sedate glow that accompanied the chime intensified a little and she stretched, waiting expectantly until the latch triggered and the pod opened.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side, leaning her hands on the edge and peering out to see the normal, placid activity of the early dayshift in the crèche.
All around there were people emerging from sleep pods, some entering them as well who had worked the night through, groups of her crèche mates briefly chatting nearby. Overhead the walls curved to meet a dome and beams of sunlight arched through to hit solar panels, moving from one to the other in a stately dance as the station that held the crèche rotated.
To either side of her, a line of sleeping pods extended around the curved wall, layered one over the other on sliding tracks that positioned the units for exit at the right time and place. Once a pod was evacuated, it slid up and out of the way, allowing the next one to use the landing space.
And speaking of that, her own pod was gently beeping, warning her of imminent motion.
She stood up on the platform outside, and moved away from the pod, hearing it close behind her as she walked down the sloping ramp and joined a line of bodies heading into the bathing and changing center, all in light sleep-suits, all with bare feet, all with faintly lit collars around their necks.
Like hers. Dev never thought much about it. It was light and fitted very well to her skin, never chafing or causing her any trouble and with the delicate tracery of the electronics on it, she actually found them rather attractive.
Or at least, that’s what she told herself.
“Morning , Dev.” Aybe 285 was in front of her, flexing his hands and stifling a yawn. There were five or six of his set in front of him, and behind her were some Ceebees, and she spotted Gigi and another of her set as well and gave her a little wave, which she returned.
They all looked alike, of course. But she could pick out the Gigi she knew because the bracelet that let her into admin space set her aside from the rest of her set mates. The Aybes and Ceebees, on the other hand, were indistinguishable from each other.
“Morning,” Dev responded automatically. She heard the soft hum of conversation around her, and behind the edge of the crèche she spotted a splash of the sun coursing through the station walls.
She had new skills. She could feel them, a tickly sensation in the back of her skull that almost made her want to scratch her head there as she wondered what the scope of the new knowledge was.
It was tech, that she knew, and a lot of it. She’d spent an evening and the following day in programming, and she’d seen the rings of dark fatigue under the eyes of the programmer when they’d finally let her come up, in a hazy mixture of adrenaline and euphoria that had her breathing hard and shaking.
She was next in line, and went to an open cleaning station, stepping inside and ducking her head a little as the air blasted away the set of paper clothing she’d been wearing to sleep in, the warm pressure feeling good against her skin.
A quick flash of irradiated light cleaned her, and then she was stepping out, turning to the right and going to the line of cabinets that ringed the outer wall. Twenty third in the row to the right of the door, on lower level A, was hers.
She opened the door and stepped inside, waiting for it to close after her. The inside light came on and the sound around her faded and she was in the only piece of privacy she’d ever known, given to her when she’d graduated from basic instruction.
Her crib, as they called it. Barely big enough for her to stretch her arms out twice, it held a cabinet, a padded bench and counter, her workspace, and the narrow, shallow drawer she kept her few personal possessions in.
Not everyone got one. Only those destined for higher skill programs were issued one of the limited cribs and it was a definite mark of status in the crèche along with the ability that went with it to manage the small amount of unregulated time in their day.
She could come here and study, watch a lecture from the library or just sit and think for a few minutes by herself. It was nice to have a place of quiet and peace in the crowded crèche, and the padded bench was even long enough for her to lay down and relax if she wanted to, though she seldom did.
Dev went to the closet and opened it, sliding into an under tunic, then pulling on a snug jumpsuit over that. The fabric was comfortable and a soft blue green in color. The gears patches on either shoulder indicated her assignment to tech and a change for her from the neutral beige of the unassigned.
It felt good. She liked the color. It contrasted with her pale hair much better than the other ones had and it made her feel happy to be getting new skills
and the opportunity to be a part of something that the director had told her was so important.
She was still a little apprehensive about the programs, but so far nothing felt strange or out of sorts. She’d had programs that left her sick to her stomach and once had come up with such a headache they’d had to put her back down again and adjust something. Even though these sessions had been very long, she’d come up feeling all right about whatever it was they’d given her.
They were something intended to get her ready, programs that would let her know what to do when she got to wherever they were sending her and give her enough information for her to know the proper way to respond and interact with the people she’d meet there.
It wasn’t knowledge, precisely, it wasn’t facts she could call up and examine. This was deep stuff. This was the kind of programming they gave the permanently assigned, who were destined to spend all their lives doing certain tasks.
She liked the feeling they gave her.
She picked up her ident badge and clipped it to her front pocket then went to the small mirror and picked up her comb, raking her thick, short hair into some kind of order. She peered at her reflection, nodding a little at it as she put the comb back down.
She checked the chrono over the door, then she pulled back the simple chair in front of the equally spare desk and sat down to review her notes before the time she was due in the lab. After a minute, though, she pushed the monitor pad on it’s arm aside and opened the drawer to her right hand, removing a tattered square object and setting in on the desktop.
With a faint smile, she opened the cover of the book and read the first page, as she had so many times before, savoring the images the words brought to her and in the simple luxury of reading—a skill not always programmed in her crèche mates.
It was her first indication that she was going to maybe get to do interesting things. Up until then she’d felt strange in her class, since she was the single member of her set, and unsure of what they intended her to do, unlike the others who had a set history to look at and set their expecations.
