The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera

by David Afsharirad

  “No, ma’am,” Sakai said in a flat voice. “I’m fine.”

  Reid nodded, because there was nothing else she could do. “Get some sleep, then. Nightmares aren’t going to excuse you from patrol.”

  She returned to the TOC, where Phan was waiting. “When did this start?”

  “Yesterday,” he answered cautiously.

  Even Phan knew this wasn’t a subject they could discuss.

  “Get some sleep,” she told him. “Use earplugs if you have to.”

  When he’d gone, Reid considered reporting the issue to Guidance . . . but she knew what Guidance would say. So long as Sakai performed her duties in an acceptable manner, she was within her rights to forego the skullcap during off-duty hours, no matter how much it disturbed the rest of the squad.

  What the hell was Sakai trying to prove?

  Reid ran her palms across the silky fabric of her skullcap. Then, as if on a dare, she slipped her fingertips under its brim and took it off.

  A cold draft kissed her bare scalp and made her shiver.

  Her pulse picked up as fear unfolded around her heart.

  You’re psyching yourself out.

  Probably.

  She studied the skullcap, turning it over, feeling the hair-thin microwires embedded in the smooth brown cloth.

  No big deal, really, to go without it. It was only out of habit that she wore it all the time.

  The hum of electronics within the TOC grew a little louder, a little closer, and then, with no further warning, Reid found herself caught up in a quiet fury. Sakai had always been the squad’s problem child. Not in the performance of her duty—if that had been an issue, Reid would have been all over her. It was Sakai’s personality. She didn’t mesh. Distant, uncommunicative, her emotions locked away. A loner. Seven months at Fort Zana had not changed her status as an outsider.

  Reid’s emotions were closer to the surface: she didn’t like Sakai; didn’t like her effect on the squad. There needed to be trust between her soldiers, but none of them really trusted Sakai and no one wanted to partner with her. No one believed she would truly have their back if things went hard south. Reid saw it in the field when her soldiers hesitated, thought twice, allowed a few seconds to pass in doubt. Someday those few seconds would be the last measure of a life.

  Reid clenched the skullcap.

  Fuck Sakai anyway.

  Ducking her head, she slipped the cap back on, pressing it close to her scalp. Within seconds, her racing heart slowed. Her anger grew cold and thoughtful.

  Sakai thought she could get by without her skullcap. Maybe she wanted to prove she had more mettle than the rest of them, but it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. “You’ll give it up,” Reid whispered. “By this time tomorrow, you’ll be back in the fold.”

  Reid finished her watch and went back to sleep, waking at 1900. She laced on her boots, then tromped next door to the TOC, where Private First Class David Wicks was on duty.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. No alerts at all from Command.” He flashed a shy smile. “But my niece had her first-birthday party today.” He pulled up a window with his email, and Reid got to watch a short video of a smiling one-year-old in a pretty blue dress.

  “Your sister doing okay now?”

  “Yeah, she’s good.”

  Wicks sent money to his sister. It was a big part of why he’d signed up.

  In the kitchen, Reid microwaved a meal, then joined Sergeant Juarez at the table. “Command thinks we’ve got a quiet night.”

  Juarez was no taller than Reid, but he carried fifty extra pounds of muscle. He’d been army for seven years, and Reid was sure he’d be in for twenty if he could pull it off. “You ever notice,” he drawled, “how the patrol gets interesting every time Command says there’s nothing going on?”

  “Just means we’re good at finding trouble.”

  Phan reeled in, with Private First Class Mila Faraci a step behind him. “How’s it look tonight, LT?” Faraci asked.

  “Quiet so far.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Juarez finished eating. He got up just as Sakai came in the door wearing a fresh uniform, her cheeks still flushed from a hot shower and her head freshly denuded of hair, leaving her scalp smooth and pale under the ceiling lights with no skullcap to hide it. Phan and Faraci were waiting together by the two humming microwaves. Phan glared. Faraci looked shocked. “I thought you were shitting me,” she murmured.

  Sakai ignored everyone. She opened the freezer and pulled out a meal packet while Reid traded a look with Juarez.

  “What the hell is with you, Sakai?” Faraci demanded.

  “Faraci,” Juarez growled, “you got a problem?”

  Faraci was strong, tall, tough, and full of swagger, but she took care never to cross Juarez. “No, Sergeant.”

  Reid got up, dumped her meal packet, and left. Juarez followed her to her quarters, where there was barely enough room for the two of them to stand without breathing each other’s air.

  “What the hell?” he demanded.

  “You know I can’t ask. She hasn’t said anything to you?”

  “She doesn’t talk to me or anybody. It’s been worse since she got back from leave.”

  Skullcaps got turned in before a soldier went on leave. It was a harsh transition, learning to live without it. But taking it up again after your twenty-one days—that was easy. No one ever had a problem with that.

  “She’s just annoyed at being back,” Reid decided. “If there was a real issue, Guidance would know. They would address it. Meantime, make sure our other noble warriors don’t get in her face. I don’t want to bust the kids when Sakai is the loose cannon.”

  “You got it, LT.”

  “This won’t last,” Reid assured him. “You’ll see. She’ll give this up tomorrow.”

  Reid was wrong.

  Sakai wore the skullcap during the nightly patrols as she was required to do, but for three days running she took the cap off as soon as she hit the showers, and it didn’t go on again until they rigged up for the next patrol. This generated its own problem: Sakai couldn’t sleep well without her skullcap. It wouldn’t be long before she was unfit for patrol.

  Reid rigged up early for the night’s adventures. Her armored vest went on first. Then she strapped into her “dead sister.” The titanium exoskeleton was made of bone-like struts that paralleled her arms and legs and were linked together by a back frame that supported the weight of her pack. Testing the rig, she crouched and then bobbed up, letting the dead sister’s powered leg struts do the work of lifting her body weight. The exoskeleton made it easy to walk for hours, to run, to jump, to kick and hit, and to support the weight of her tactical rifle, an MCL1a with muzzle-mounted cams and AI integration.

  The rest of the squad was still prepping when she slung her weapon, tucked her helmet under her arm, and strode out into the small yard enclosed by the fort’s fifteen-foot-high walls.

  The night air was heavy with heat and humidity and the scent of mud and blossoms, but the clouds that had brought a late-afternoon shower had dispersed, leaving the sky clear and awash in the light of a rising moon. Reid allowed herself a handful of seconds to take in the night as it was meant to be seen. Then she pulled her helmet on. Seen through her visor, the yard brightened with the green, alien glow of night vision while icons mustered across the bottom of the display, one for every soldier wearing a skullcap: Juarez, Faraci, Phan, and Wicks.

  A familiar voice spoke through Reid’s helmet audio: “You’re early tonight.”

  She smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “So are you. Slow night?”

  “Not too bad.”

  He was her primary handler from Guidance, codenamed Tyrant, the only name she knew him by. His job was to assist in field operations, overseeing data analysis and relaying communications with Command from his office, five thousand miles away in Charleston. Tyrant had access to the feeds from her helmet cams as well as the displ
ay on her visor, and he kept a close eye on all of it. “Where’s Sakai’s icon?” he asked. “You didn’t give her the night off?”

  The door opened and, to Reid’s surprise, Sakai stepped through, already rigged in armor and bones, her pack on, her weapon on her shoulder, and her helmet in her gloved hand. But no skullcap.

  And without her skullcap, she didn’t appear as an icon on Reid’s display.

  “She’s challenging you,” Tyrant murmured, amusement in his voice.

  Sakai shot Reid a sideways glance, but if she was looking for a reaction, she was disappointed. Reid’s face was hidden behind the anonymous black shield of her visor.

  Sakai turned away, setting her helmet down on a dusty table. Then, like a good girl, she fished her skullcap out of a pocket and put it on.

  Her icon popped up on Reid’s display. Reid gazed at it and a menu slid open. She shifted her gaze, selecting “physiology” from the list of options. Her system AI whispered a brief report: status marginal; brain chemistry indicates insufficient sleep. But as Sakai’s skullcap went to work, stimulating the chemical factory of her brain, her status ramped up. By the time the squad assembled, Sakai’s condition became nominal, and the AI approved her for the night’s mission.

  That night, they were to patrol far to the north. They spread out in their customary formation: two hundred meters between each soldier, with Reid on the east, Sakai on the west, and the others in between. The physical separation let them cover more territory while they remained electronically linked to each other, to Tyrant, and to the angel that accompanied them. The surveillance drone was the squad’s remote eyes, hunting ahead for signs of enemy insurgents.

  Reid moved easily through the flat terrain, the power of her stride augmented by her exoskeleton’s struts and joints, while the shocked footplates that supported her booted feet generated a faint, rhythmic hiss with every step. Her gaze was never still, roving between the squad map, the video feed from the angel, the terrain around her, and the quality of the ground where her next steps would fall.

  Threat assessment had gotten harder since the start of the rainy season. Stands of head-high grass covered what only a month ago had been bare red earth. Thickets had leafed out and the scattered trees had sprouted green canopies. Cattle liked to spend the hottest hours of the day beneath the trees, their sharp hooves treading the ground into sticky bogs. For most of the year this worn-out land was barely habitable, with the Sahara encroaching from the north. But for at least this one more year the rains had come, bringing life back—and providing extensive cover for an enemy made up of violent but half-trained insurgent soldiers.

  Reid held her tactical rifle across her body, ready for use at all times as she searched for signs of disturbance that could not be accounted for by cattle or goats or the herdsmen who accompanied them. At the same time, video from her helmet cams was relayed to Guidance for first-pass analysis by Intelligence AIs—a process duplicated for everyone in the squad.

  Tyrant remained silent as three hours passed with no anomalies found. Despite the uneventful night, no one’s attention strayed. The skullcaps wouldn’t allow it. If a soldier’s focus began to drift, brain activity would reflect it, and be corrected. Every soldier remained alert at all times.

  Near midnight Tyrant finally spoke. “Reid.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Weather on the way. Nasty squall from the west. ETA twenty minutes.”

  “Roger that.”

  She switched to gen-com, addressing the squad. “Heavy weather on the way. That means any signs of hostile activity are about to get erased. Stick to designated paths plotted by Guidance and do not get ahead of the squad.”

  After a few minutes the wind picked up, bringing a black front with it. The squad map showed them approaching a road to the north, a one-lane stretch of highway paved in cracked asphalt, its position in the landscape marked by a cell tower rising above the trees. Reid spoke again over gen-com: “Wicks, you’ve got the tower on your transect. Use extra caution.”

  “No worries, LT.”

  Right. It was her job to worry.

  The rain reached Sakai first. Then it rolled over Phan, Juarez, Faraci, and Wicks. Reid was a few steps from the asphalt road when she heard the sizzling edge of the storm sweeping toward her. The rain hit, hammering with Biblical force, generating a chiming chorus of pings against the bones of her dead sister and enclosing her in a scintillating curtain that even night vision couldn’t pierce. At her feet, a veil of standing water hid the ground.

  “Hold up,” Reid said over gen-com. “No one move until—”

  An explosion erupted maybe two hundred meters away, a ball of fire that illuminated the base of the cell tower where it stood just south of the road. Reid dropped to her belly. A splash of muddy water briefly obscured her faceplate before a frictionless coating sent it sliding away. Her heart hammered: the squad map showed Wicks at the foot of the tower. “Wicks, report!”

  “Grenades incoming,” Tyrant warned as another icon popped up on the map: a red skull marking a newly discovered enemy position on the other side of the road.

  Reid echoed the warning over gen-com. “Grenades incoming!” Clutching her weapon, she curled into a fetal position to minimize her exposure. A status notification popped up on her display, a bold-red statement of Wicks’s condition: nonresponsive; traumatic injury with blood loss.

  Goddamn.

  The grenades hit. Two behind her, one to the east. She felt the concussions in her body and in the ground beneath her shoulder, but her helmet shielded her eyes and ears, and if debris fell on her she couldn’t tell it apart from the storm.

  She rolled to her belly, bringing the stock of her MCL1a to her shoulder as she strained to see past the rain to the other side of the road. “Tyrant, I need a target.”

  “Target acquired.”

  All extraneous data vanished from her visor, leaving only a gold targeting circle and a small red point that showed where her weapon was aimed. It took half-a-second to align point and circle. Then her AI fired the weapon.

  The MCL1a’s standard projectile was a 7.62mm round, but it was the second trigger Reid felt dropping away from her finger. The stock kicked as a grenade rocketed from the underslung launcher, looking like a blazing comet in night vision as it shot across the road, disappearing into the brush on the other side. Reid couldn’t see the target, but when the grenade hit, the explosion lit up the rain and threw the intervening trees into silhouette.

  A second grenade chased the first, fired from Faraci’s position farther west. Reid used the explosion as cover. She flexed her legs, using the power of the dead sister’s joints to launch to her feet. Then she dropped back, away from the road and into the brush as the squad icons returned to her visor. “Juarez! I’m going after Wicks. Take Phan and Sakai. Set up a defensive perimeter.”

  “Roger that.” On the squad map, lines shot from the sergeant’s icon, linking him to Phan and Sakai as they switched to a different channel to coordinate.

  “Faraci, you’re with me. Full caution as you approach Wicks. Take the path Guidance gives you and do not stray.”

  “Roger, LT.”

  Reid flinched as a burst of automatic weapons fire rattled the nearby brush. Another gun opened up. A glance at the squad map confirmed it was Juarez, returning fire.

  “Got your route,” Tyrant said.

  A transparent, glowing green rectangle popped into existence at Reid’s feet as if suspended just above the sheen of standing water. It stretched into a luminous path, winding out of sight behind a thicket. Reid bounded after it, running all-out—Hell-bent, maybe, because she could see only three strides ahead. If a hazard popped up in front of her she’d have to go through it or over it, because she was going too fast to stop. When she spied a suspiciously neat circle of rainwater, she vaulted it. Then she ducked to avoid a branch weighed down by the pounding rain.

  Hell failed to claim her, and in just a few seconds the path brought her to the conc
rete pad that supported the cell tower, and to Wicks, who lay just a few meters behind it.

  He was belly down in almost two inches of water and he wasn’t nonresponsive anymore. He struggled to lift his helmeted head, but the weight of his pack and his injuries pinned him in place. His shoulders shook with a wracking cough as Reid dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Damn it, Wicks, don’t drown.”

  Another grenade went off, this one maybe a hundred meters away. Reid flinched, but her duty was to Wicks. She pulled the pins on his pack straps and heaved the pack aside. Then she grabbed the frame of his dead sister and flipped him onto his back. He made a faint mewling noise, more fear than pain. The skullcap should be controlling his pain. As she shrugged off her pack and got out her med kit, she tried to reassure him. “Wicks, listen to me. We’ll get you out of here. You’ll be okay.”

  He groaned . . . in denial maybe, or despair.

  “Tyrant, where’s my battle medic?”

  “I’m here,” a woman said, speaking through her helmet audio. “Let’s do an assessment.”

  Reid’s helmet cams let the medic see what she saw. Wicks still had all four limbs, but most of his right calf was gone, and shrapnel had shredded the flesh of his right arm. Reid used her body to shield his wounds from the rain for the few seconds it took to apply a spray-on coagulant. Then she slipped off his helmet to check for head injuries. When she found none, she put his helmet back on.

  Tyrant said, “Faraci’s at twenty meters and closing fast. Don’t shoot her.”

  “Roger that.”

  Juarez was still trading fire with someone to the north when Faraci burst out of the brush. She dropped her pack and then dropped to her knees beside Reid. “How’s he doing, LT?”

  “How you doing, Wicks?” Reid asked as she slathered wound putty across his chewed-up calf.