by Linda Nagata
“The location of the August-19 facility eluded us for so long because it was camouflaged by the activity of an L-AI. Once we understood that, we were able to modify our search algorithms to account for the effect. We now believe the primary facility to be located in the Middle East, hidden within the day-to-day chaos of an urban center afflicted by decades of conflict and destabilized by runaway population growth.”
“Oh fuck,” I whisper. “Is she talking about Baghdad?”
Beside me, Leonid shakes his head. “Close. But we are looking at Basra.”
I query my encyclopedia. It reads me a brief: Basra, once known as the Venice of the East, is a city in southern Iraq with an estimated population of six million people, a majority under the age of thirty …
Ashman explains that intelligence-gathering is ongoing in an attempt to confirm the precise location of the suspect facility, but it’s a difficult task in a city divided into fiefdoms, whose inhabitants have long ago learned not to see what is not their business.
“We must give away nothing of what we know,” she warns. “Any hint that we are closing in on the location of this lab could cause our targets to flee, or inspire other powers to take preemptive measures—cruise missile strikes, even nuclear intervention. Everyone is on edge: the Russians, the Israelis, the Iranians, coalitions of dragons, even our own armed forces. Thousands could die, and we will still not know who is involved in August-19. And it is imperative that we know.
“We have designed a mission designated Daylight Bridge. It calls for a small strike force to raid the August-19 facility with the primary goal of recovering background intelligence on who is funding the work, who has supplied the distribution network, who drew up the hit list. It is imperative that we extract this information. If we do not, if we were to simply destroy the site, it’s certain the conspirators would set up again in a new location.”
Of course we have already run the raid Lieutenant Ashman has described. That was the exercise we did tonight: Locate a suspected biowarfare lab, take control of it, confirm its nature, collect intelligence, and transmit all data to Command. Hold the facility until Command authorizes us to destroy it. And of course tonight we failed to do any of that. In the real world we will be inserted into a city of six million people, with noncombatants on the streets, in vehicles, in every window and doorway, with trained fighters patrolling among them and no way to tell the difference between a kid playing with a weapon and a hired gun ready to slam any suspected threat.
Lieutenant Ashman steps down, yielding the podium to Colonel Abajian. “There is an additional complication,” he announces, scowling at the front row as if inviting a challenge. “The L-AI which kept the target lab hidden for so many weeks continues to operate. Known locally as Nashira, we believe that it predates the lab and that it was originally established to oversee security in what, historically, has been a violent district, one scarred by war and terrorism, and that continues to be threatened by rival militias.
“Nashira is linked into a distributed surveillance network of cameras, minidrones, chemical sensors, and human observers. The system distinguishes between residents and outsiders, and evaluates activity in all public locations. When suspicious activity is detected, it generates alerts that are received by most of the neighborhood residents, including the local militia.
“Nashira will certainly designate any activity associated with Daylight Bridge as hostile, and we won’t be able to do anything about that. Our best tactic is to complete the mission before the opposition has a chance to organize.”
From my seat near the back of the room, I interrupt to ask a question. “Do we have a physical location on Nashira?”
Abajian looks up, finds me in the fourth row, meets my gaze with a stonewall expression that reveals nothing. “The physical location of Nashira is under investigation. We believe it exists within the district. But the L-AI is not the target of Daylight Bridge.”
“But you would be interested in any data we might gather relating to Nashira?”
“We are always interested in data, Captain Shelley.”
A discussion follows. Cory is unsure if the Red is behind us. Kanoa insists that it is, or we wouldn’t be here. Questions are asked and answered. Tactics evaluated. Through it all, the assumption is that ETM 7-1 will take the mission.
When have we ever said no?
• • • •
As Abajian, Kanoa, and Lieutenant Ashman evaluate the quality of the intelligence, debating the possibility that the information we have has been corrupted by the local AI, I get up to go. Talk won’t produce an answer. That will have to wait for boots on the ground. I touch Leonid on the shoulder. “Send me your contact information, so I can call if I need to.” He nods, and waves me away.
I trade a look with Delphi, and when I walk out I hold the door open for the few seconds it takes her to slip out with me. I let it close with a soft click. The hallway is lit only by dim lights from the lobby where the rigged MP is on watch.
Delphi is still carrying her coat over her arm. She holds it close against her belly, her bright eyes fixed on me. “You’re going to do the mission, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
I wish I could take her in my arms, take her into one of the empty rooms in this empty building, and destroy all the empty days that have gathered between us. But I can’t. She’s too far away, and that is my fault.
She eyes me cautiously. “I asked you before if you were a prisoner. You’re not, are you?”
“No. It was my choice.”
“Okay.”
She beckons me to follow. We walk together to the stairs that lead to the basement. When I give her a questioning look, she indicates the MP and taps her ear. With his helmet audio, he can hear anything we say. So we go downstairs. She turns lights on. We’re alone in the hall, outside the door of what, just yesterday, was the medical suite.
“Tell me how you survived the wreck of Lotus.”
So I do. In spare words, I tell her of my long fall back to Earth, and the hours that followed, alone in the water. She listens with her eyes averted, making it easier to talk.
Afterward, she says, “I looked for you. Did you know that? I didn’t want to believe you were really gone.” She laughs softly, mocking herself. “Technically, I’m still looking for you. I’ve got a facial-recognition program running, scanning public indexes for an image of you … anything posted after that day. You know? I thought a surveillance camera might catch you, or maybe you would show up in the background of some tourist’s shot.” Her shoulders rise and fall in a quiet sigh. “I never had a hit.”
“I don’t get out much.”
“All work, all the time?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you have a lover, Shelley?”
“No.” My answer comes too quickly because I want her to know there’s no one—though the truth is more complicated than a simple no. “Not like you mean.”
“Who?” she asks.
I hold back. It’s not something I ever talk about. Sex inside the squad just isn’t supposed to happen. It’s like admitting to incest. “It was just physical comfort. A few times. She’s got no plans. No claims.”
I don’t ask Delphi if she has a lover. I’ve got no right to ask. No claim. I don’t want to know.
“It’s kind of a cult, isn’t it?” she asks.
“Yeah. I think that’s fair. But what we do is worth doing. It’s not dumbass stunts. It’s real.”
“I believe you.”
“I thought I would be dead by now.”
I don’t know why I say it. I regret it as soon as I do. It comes out like a confession.
Seconds pass as she studies me. I sense her shifting thoughts, imagine her revised responses reflected in her eyes as she analyzes my psychological condition, weighing the likelihood of survivor guilt, or guilt for the horrible acts I’ve committed, or the death wish I’ve always denied. But my imagination doesn’t go far enough, because in the end
she says the most unexpected thing: “I still love you.”
Then she turns and walks away, back to the stairs, shrugging into her coat as she goes.
“Delphi … Karin.”
She pauses with a foot on the first step, looking back, her expression patient. Not expectant. Not demanding.
“I think this is the last time out for me.”
“That has more than one meaning, Shelley,” she points out. “But at least this time, I’ll know.”
She disappears up the stairs. I stay for a while, sitting on the floor with my back to the wall, my wrists cocked over my knees, wondering why it never feels like I’ve done enough.
Kanoa only allows me a little time to brood. After a few minutes, he links in and says, “Let’s go.”
• • • •
The program in my head is still counting down to zero assist. I thought it would be a fight at this point to hold myself together, to fend off the black mood that used to afflict me when the skullnet went down. But the skullnet hasn’t gone down. It’s still in my head. It’s still working. And ironically, I’m in better control now than I ever was when the system was automated.
The embedded AI that operates my skullnet has had two years to figure out who I am, how I work, what I want—and it listens to me. I think, Lock it down, and it gives me a machinelike, cool, logical efficiency. It’s a state of mind I like to be in. It’s one I cherish. It’s where I keep myself on that cold, dark walk back to a home that isn’t mine.
The other soldiers in my squad are half-seen, fog-wreathed figures scattered in the road ahead, hauling their gear. Only Kanoa is beside me. He’s silent for most of the way, but as we approach the housing area, he says, “We need to check out your skullnet. It’s not functioning to standard.”
“No,” I tell him. “It’s fine.”
The women break off, going to their own residence. Escamilla and Dunahee take a path to another house.
“You’ll report to medical,” Kanoa says. “0800.”
He doesn’t stay to hear any more objections, but follows Dunahee, disappearing into a flash of white light as the door of a residence swings briefly open.
I think, Calm. Lock it down.
• • • •
At 0800 I’m back in the basement of the command center, sitting across a desk from the physician I saw before. She’s not a neurologist, so she’s got a specialist present virtually, an older man, Caucasian, thick white hair neatly combed. Facial recognition informs me that he was on the team that developed the neuromodulating microbeads and the skullcaps—later the skullnets—used to control them.
He looks at me with a sentimental gaze, smiles, shakes his head like he can’t quite believe I’m real. “Captain Shelley. It’s good to know the rumor of your death was just a cover story.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Yes. Well … I have good news. I’ve run the basic diagnostics on your skullnet and the issue is simple enough. You’ve got a bad receiver. Once we correct that, we can update the software. You should be fine after that.”
“I’m fine now.”
I tell him about the changes I made: the program I loaded that is dialing my automatic support down to zero; the minor surgery Logan performed for me, removing the skullnet’s receiver.
The local physician pops up out of her chair and comes around the desk to get a close look at the incision, half-hidden now behind a fuzz of black hair. “I thought it was a field-treated wound from your last mission.”
The neurologist looks worried. “We need to replace the receiver. You’re at risk for—”
“I’m doing fine.”
“Of course you think you can handle it. I understand that. But every study shows that a soldier deprived of neurological support after long-term use—”
“I’m not deprived of anything. I still have the skullnet. It still works. The AI is still there and I get what I need out of it. But no one else—nothing—gets to tell me what to think anymore.”
He asks questions. I answer them, admitting that I’m still figuring things out. He’s impressed at how well I’m doing. “This isn’t a situation we’ve studied. It’s just too risky, because it leaves no mechanism to override the subject’s obsessions except cerebral exhaustion. Any emotion could be ridden to destruction. You understand? An overwhelming pleasure, or despair, or anger. There’s no system in place now to hold that back.”
“There is a system,” I say. “It’s my will. Who I am.”
He doesn’t trust me to handle it. “I’m going to recommend the original system be restored.”
“I’m going to decline your recommendation.”
He looks puzzled. “I’m not making the recommendation to you. I’m making it to your commanding officer.”
“That’s a voluntary relationship,” I tell him. “Legally, I’m a civilian, and that makes it my choice.”
• • • •
Kanoa intercepts me as I’m walking back to base housing on the weed-grown road. I expect to get chewed out, lectured on why I need to allow the Red to have its electronic fingers forever inside my head, but instead he frowns at me with his worried-dad expression and says, “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I never would have sent you to medical if I knew.”
Every indicator in his expression says he’s telling the truth—which leaves me momentarily speechless, and then in desperate need of some appropriate half-truth. But before I can come up with anything, he answers his own question. “You didn’t trust me.”
“I guess not.” And then, because I don’t have any idea why he’s not furious: “Are you saying you would have covered for me?”
He scans the empty fields before answering. “Let’s say I wouldn’t have regarded it as a problem, so I wouldn’t have bothered Command with it.” He comes a step closer. His voice drops. “I did the same thing over a year ago. You were so attached to your hardware, I thought it would worry you if you knew. I never guessed you’d consider doing it yourself—and I didn’t think you could handle it.”
I smile. “You didn’t trust me?”
His frown turns into a deep scowl. “Are you sure you can handle it? You’ve been erratic. Unstable.”
“I’m working it out.”
A cold wind gusts past us as he asks, “What made you do it?”
“Abajian’s mission only required me to reconnoiter the UGF. The Red required me to destroy it. That was a suicide mission. It was just luck we got out alive.”
“I saw Leonid Sergun’s report. I thought he was exaggerating.”
“No. Papa was the only sane one. I am not going to take my squad on a suicide mission again.”
“Understood.” We start walking. “Abajian’s a problem though. He got a copy of the medical report. He doesn’t understand shit about how an LCS works. He wants to pull you off the mission.”
“If he does, there is no mission. He doesn’t get my squad.”
“Agreed. We’ll let him explain that to the president.”
• • • •
We run the mission at noon.
We go in as one squad with nine sets of boots on the ground. It should be enough to do the job, but it’s rough. We’re facing an army of irregulars. Resistance is simulated: programmed projections in our visors that look like moving figures, muzzle flash, the blast of grenades, all with appropriate audio. We need heavy weapons to get past them, but heavy weapons are considered prohibitively dangerous to civilians, so we’re not carrying any. We don’t reach the lab.
The mission planners decide to eliminate the helicopters, opting for stealth over speed. When we go back after nightfall, we go on foot. This time, resistance takes longer to build. In the end though, we get hit just as hard.
We try again before the sun is up—just a quiet dawn raid that leads to an all-out battle. We get another chance at noon. Same result, but at least we’re getting practice working together.
We keep at it. Over the next few days, the battle AI changes the s
cenarios. We change our tactics. We do better when we go in as two teams, advancing on parallel blocks. That divides the defense and makes it less effective, but we still don’t get inside the lab.
“They won’t let us win,” Tran concludes as we walk back to our housing, “because they have no fucking idea what the lab actually looks like.”
I laugh, but I know it’s more than that. Civilians, I say. I mean it as an imprecation, but it comes out weirdly flat in my synthesized voice. “They complicate everything.”
Flynn turns on me. “Goddamn! You complicate everything. I hate that creepy synth voice. Why can’t you just talk like a human being?”
What the hell can I say? It’s not something I even think about anymore.
Tran is quicker on the return fire. Silence is golden, he says. And then jumps back fast when Flynn takes a swing at him.
Civilians are the problem, though. It’s one thing to go all-out on an assault. It’s a different game when you have to shoot around bystanders—some who might not be as innocent as they’d like you to believe. That’s why we fucking hate urban combat.
We want to leave a small footprint. None of us wants to get to that lab by stepping over the bodies of noncombatants—but it’s starting to look like it’s going to come down to a trade, a choice of who lives and who dies. If Delphi is on August-19’s list, or Jaynie, or President Monteiro, a trade will be made.
It’s that simple.
• • • •
A media room is set up in the basement of the command center. I’m there for hours every day, taking virtual walks through the target district, memorizing the pattern of the streets and the placement of the buildings, circling the block where the lab is believed to be located, studying the setup from every angle.
The target is an old apartment building that spans the width of the block. It has three aboveground floors and a basement. We want to enter on the south side, where a service entrance leads directly to the basement. The alternate entrance is the building’s front door, where we’d have to cross a small lobby to reach the interior stairs.
