by Linda Nagata
“I just want to keep an eye on things.”
“Have you got a feeling about something, Shelley?”
She wants to know if I’m King David again, with the Red riding me, warning me of impending danger. I eye the skullnet icon, its persistent glow an indicator of artificial activity in my head.
Yes, I have a feeling. It’s the first time in months I’ve felt this way.
But I don’t tell her. She’ll take it the wrong way. She’ll ask questions I can’t answer.
No way though, that I’m going to ignore the warning. “Just stay inside, okay? If you need me, use gen-com.”
• • • •
In the parking lot, I open the back of the gray SUV and get out one of the new HITR M-CL1a assault rifles, still in its case. I take it into the backseat, switch it on, and run through the initial security sequence that registers it to me. Flynn watches me doubtfully through the partly open door. “LT—”
“Get me some ammo, Flynn.”
“LT, if something’s happenin’, you gotta let me know.”
“I don’t know that anything is happening. I just want to walk around.”
I rig up in my dead sister, using the SUV as cover against a security camera that’s keeping watch from the hotel entrance.
“LT, you don’t look like a civilian.”
“It’s okay, Flynn. There’s no one here to see.”
I put my helmet on so I can use night vision, and then I move swiftly into the cover of the overgrown field, silencing the crickets with my presence.
• • • •
I stay low, so that the brush and tall grass hide me from the frontage road as I creep toward the thicker cover of the young trees on the western edge of the field. I carry the HITR close to my side to make its profile less obvious to watching satellites. The angel will notify me with a blue alert if a traffic drone gets close, but my goal is to reach the trees before that happens. Four times as I cross the field I freeze within the cover of the weeds, waiting for interstate traffic to pass before I move again.
I take up a position twenty-five meters within the woods, well beyond the angel’s patrol route, surrounded by young trees with spindly trunks holding up a dense canopy of spring leaves. The lights of the hotel glint through the brush, but I can see Flynn only when I look with angel sight.
At 2200 Tuttle comes to relieve Flynn.
At 2248 my helmet’s audio pickups filter a faint buzzing sound from the rustle of windblown leaves. The anomalous noise is coming from somewhere behind and to my right. I resist the urge to turn around. Moving nothing but my eyes, I summon the feed from my rear helmet cam. Several seconds pass before I spot an aerial seeker—a mini surveillance drone like those that tracked me in Manhattan. It’s at least eight meters away and only a meter and a half above the ground as it moves slowly east through the trees alongside the frontage road.
It gives no indication it’s detected me, but as it nears the edge of the woods it suddenly descends to the ground. I check my feed. The angel is approaching the western limit of its programmed route, swinging past the seeker’s position before circling back toward the hotel. I wait and watch to see if it will pick up the seeker, but it fails to do so, and as it moves off, the seeker rises from the ground, ascending just high enough to achieve a clear view of the hotel across the field.
It’s possible the seeker has been fielded by a government agency, but a seeker requires the oversight of an operator and I can’t see an agency expending the manpower when our position can be easily monitored through traffic cams, police drones, and satellite surveillance. It’s far more likely the seeker belongs to someone with a special interest in the Apocalypse Squad. I’ve been expecting Carl Vanda—but I need to confirm it’s him and I can’t send our angel to look, because any deviation in its route will be a warning to Vanda that we suspect he’s there.
I’ll have to go myself.
But I’m not going to leave the squad vulnerable. I open a solo link to Tuttle, and then I concentrate on a thought: Don’t make a move. The simple AI in my skullnet senses my intention, picks up the thought, translates it to words, and then synthesizes a verbal message, which it sends to Tuttle, who is wearing his audio loop.
“LT? Where are you?”
Wary of the seeker’s audio pickups, I answer in a barely audible whisper: “West of you. Don’t look. Don’t move. Don’t change the angel’s route. Just listen. You’re being watched, okay?”
“Okay. By who?”
“I want you to call a general alert. Wake everyone up. Have them evacuate on foot from the hotel’s east end. They have to stay out of sight. Got it?”
“Yes, sir?” Not sounding sure at all.
“Your assignment is different. You need to stay where you are and act like nothing is happening.”
“Sir, what is happening?”
“Now, Tuttle.”
I listen to him call the alert. He does a good job, repeating what I told him precisely, insistently: “Evacuate, but stay out of sight. . . . I don’t know what’s going on, just do it.”
When I’m satisfied the squad is on the move, I move too, west through the woods as quietly as I can, my footsteps padded by damp leaves and everything around me bright in night vision.
The ground begins to slope up under my feet. I’m encouraged, because logically, I’ll find the enemy at a high point. I move as quickly as I dare. I’ve advanced over two hundred meters through the woods when I see a two-story house with trees leaning over it. Its white paint is stained by time and neglect. Shingles are missing from the roof, and moss is growing on the ones that remain. It looks abandoned. The only sign of life is a faint glow, visible because I’m using night vision, coming from the second-story window.
I listen for voices, for movement, and hear none. Just the rustle of leaves in the canopy, the chirping of crickets.
Moving on, I circle around the house. The woods have taken the yard for their own, but the driveway is claimed by only a few patches of grass, indicating someone comes now and then to visit the old place.
Someone’s here now.
An electric sedan is parked close to the covered porch. The front door is open.
An icon ignites at the edge of my vision: a solo link from Jaynie. But she doesn’t say anything. She just wants me to know she’s watching through my helmet cams.
I step onto the porch stairs and look inside. Night vision shows me an interior stairway with its banister removed. I cross the porch, treading lightly, and as I reach the open door, I finally hear a voice, its volume boosted by my helmet audio. It’s one I know. “Check,” Carl Vanda says. “Position data on the third seeker is in.”
A second voice answers, also male but younger, less resonant, with a slight country twang. “Triangulating.”
In Manhattan, Vanda came after me with a sniper rifle, but there’s a bigger operation going on here.
I use the thrust of the exoskeleton to bound up the stairs, requiring only three strides to reach the top. I’ve got my HITR ready to use if I have to, but I want to take Vanda alive.
Of course they hear me coming.
A figure appears in an open doorway near the top of the stairs. Night vision shows me the narrow face of the man in brown—Carl Vanda’s right-hand man in Manhattan, who almost killed me on the sidewalk. A thin honeycomb cast wraps his wrist and hand—I guess I broke bones when I kicked him—but he’s working despite the injury. His farsights help him see in the dark, and he’s carrying an assault rifle that he’s getting ready to use against me.
I want Carl Vanda alive, but I don’t give a shit about this guy. So it’s just a question of who can pull the trigger first. My tactical AI takes over, firing a three-round burst into his throat. His head snaps back and I’m jumping over his body as it collapses to the floor.
I burn a half second assessing the room:
no furniture, old-fashioned wallpaper, a stained ceiling, a window sash thrown open with the woods beyond. The forest’s dense canopy hides the lights of the hotel, but with targeting data from his seekers, Vanda doesn’t need to see the hotel to hit it with the portable, programmable missile launcher he’s got set up by the window. The device is on a motorized tripod already bolted to the floor. My guess is he meant to pull out, and then pull the trigger remotely, maybe from halfway across the state.
It’s too late now to execute that plan, but he’s adaptable.
He tosses a luminous tablet at me—probably the one that controls the launcher. The light dazzles my night vision. I dive for the floor. A pistol goes off. The tablet bounces, spraying its bright-green light around the room as the round explodes against the wall behind me with a concussion like a mini grenade. I keep my head up, my HITR ready as I slam against the floor. My tactical AI is ready too. It puts a targeting circle on Vanda’s chest.
He’s bulky with body armor, so I take the AI’s advice and fire two shots that knock him backward against the wall. He’s stunned, unable to breathe, glaring at me through his farsights, the pistol still in his hand but only because he can’t uncurl his fingers to let it go.
I jump to my feet, twist the pistol out of his grip, and pitch it out the window. Then I grab his farsights off his face and toss them toward the door. He’s starting to recover some volition and takes a weak swing at me, so I seize him by the front of his jacket and hurl him facedown on the floor. Shouldering my HITR, I follow him down, planting the knee joint of my dead sister between his shoulder blades with enough pressure to cut off his breathing. I grope in the pockets of my armored vest and a miracle happens: I find a zip tie, left over from First Light. I use it to bind his hands behind his back and then I haul him to his feet. He makes a wheezing sound as he gasps for air.
Outside, past the rustle of leaves, I hear a racing engine. At first I think it’s on the interstate, but then I hear the crackle and pop of leaves and twigs crushed beneath tires. Someone is on the frontage road. With a thought, I expand the squad map, but the only soldier noted on it is me. No one else is wearing a helmet.
“Jaynie, I hope that’s you coming.”
“Roger that. Is your situation secure?”
“Affirmative. I’m moving the prisoner outside.”
Vanda is hurting. I hear it in the low, grating fury of his voice when he tells me, “You’re going to Hell, Shelley. I’ll see to it.”
“Been there, asshole, thanks to you.”
I push him ahead of me across the room, steering around the black puddle of blood seeping from his compatriot, and then I make him kneel while I recover both his farsights and the ones that belonged to his dead friend. They’re probably so tight with security we won’t be able to get any data out of them, but I don’t want to leave them behind for somebody else to crack.
After that, I half drag, half carry Vanda down the stairs and outside. “Jaynie, I’m taking him out to the frontage road.”
“Roger that.” Her voice is crisp and cold. It dawns on me she’s furious, but she’s not going to let that interfere with the operation. “We’re almost there.”
She comes with lights off. As she brakes, Nolan bails out of the shotgun seat.
“Search him,” I order.
While I hold Vanda, Nolan frisks him, finding a knife, a multitool, a small pistol.
“Check his eyes. Make sure he’s not wearing an overlay.”
“I don’t wear an overlay,” Vanda growls. “And no chip. Only an idiot would hardwire himself into the Cloud.”
Nolan pushes Vanda’s head back anyway, shining a light into his eyes to make sure there’s nothing there. “He’s clear. You detecting any EM?”
My helmet tracks nearby sources, but it’s not picking up anything from Vanda. “Negative.”
“Move!” Jaynie says. “Get him inside now.”
We bundle him into the backseat. I climb in behind him, awkward in my dead sister. Nolan comes in on the other side. As soon as the doors close, Jaynie is driving: over the shoulder, through the wire fence, and onto the interstate, heading west.
I look behind—no traffic—then lean my HITR against the door. “Nolan, you got any zip ties?”
We bind Vanda’s ankles together. I want to get him out of his armor so that if I have to shoot him again, it will count. “Try anything and you’ll have a concussion,” I warn him as Nolan cuts his hands loose.
He’s not stupid. He knows that while I’m wearing armor, bones, and helmet, there’s nothing he can do to hurt me. Even if he gets his hands on my HITR, it won’t fire while it’s registered to me. He might be able to take a swing at Nolan before I break his skull or snap his neck, but that’s it.
All he has left is talk.
As we work his jacket off, he asks, “Anyone still alive that you care about, Shelley?”
Nolan tells him, “Shut the fuck up.”
“You should take this chance to call them and say good-bye.”
Nolan waits until Vanda’s armor comes off, then he slams a fist into his ribs, making him grunt.
“Don’t hit him, Nolan,” I say. “The Red sent his plane nose-down in the dirt last year. He’s a shattered mess inside. We don’t want to start any internal bleeding.”
“Burn in Hell,” Vanda whispers.
We bind his hands again behind his back and then drape his jacket over his head so he can’t see where all this is going.
• • • •
As we head west at exactly the speed limit, I think about what just happened and I wonder, Why now? In Manhattan I felt abandoned, it was only luck that let me live, but tonight it was the Red. Was that luck too? It’s just a rogue AI, after all. It’s not God and it’s not omniscient. It can’t be. It can’t be everywhere at once. It has to allocate resources, so it comes and goes.
Harvey speaks on gen-com. We’ve been on the road nine minutes, so it surprises me we’re still in range. “Second unit loaded and ready. Departing now.”
Jaynie and I ask the same question at the same time. “You got the angel?”
“Roger that,” Harvey says, managing to insert a note of irony.
“And you’ve got Delphi?” I ask.
“Yes, sir. All present. Vasquez?”
“Here.”
“Shima says to get off the interstate. Take Four Fifteen north and keep your speed legal. She’s setting up a safe house.”
“Roger that.”
The lights of Des Moines loom ahead of us.
I take my helmet off, put it on the floor beside my feet. I want to take off my dead sister too—it’s not made for sitting—but I need more room to do that.
This was a successful operation, but there are no hoo-yahs, no congratulations. No one says anything. There’s only silence, for miles.
AGAINST THE BEAST
* * *
EPISODE 2:
SHADOW GOVERNMENTS
WE REACH THE SAFE HOUSE at 0341. It’s an isolated farmhouse with a couple of outbuildings and miles of wheat fields all around it. There are no lights on as we roll up, and no vehicles in sight.
Jaynie takes Harvey to check things out. No explosives go off, no commandos fall out of the sky, so we cut the zip tie on Vanda’s ankles and get him out of the car, with the jacket still over his head. His legs have gone numb. Nolan and I have to carry him through the front door and into the basement. There’s a toilet there. We cut the zip tie on his wrists so he can use it with the door open.
Flynn and Harvey rig up and come downstairs to take over guarding the prisoner. I’m ready to sleep, but Jaynie wants to see me.
• • • •
There’s a small room set up as an office, with a keyboard and monitor and shelves of books on agriculture, business, political philosophy, and the history of war. Jaynie is leaning hip-cocked
on the edge of the desk, watching me through her farsights as I come in.
“Close the door.”
I do it, and then finally get out of my dead sister, popping the cinches so I can step free. Jaynie waits until I fold up the frame. She’s never been to officer candidate school, but she’s studied plenty of officers. She knows how to play the role.
“We are a linked combat squad. We are about communication. If we do not operate as a unit, we fail.”
“It wasn’t a mission. It was just a hunch.”
“If you had any reason to believe—”
“I didn’t have a reason!”
“Just a ‘feeling’?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I had a feeling, a really strong feeling that it would be a good idea to look around.”
“So strong you rigged up and took a weapon—”
“Damn it, Jaynie, you were looking through my eyes. If I hadn’t gotten out there when I did—”
“If the Red hadn’t sent you out there.”
“Yes. If it didn’t send me out there we would all be dead now, along with the handful of civilians who were in that hotel. I, for one, am fucking grateful.”
“And if you had communicated your concerns to me? We could have stopped Vanda’s operation before it started. You murdered a man, Shelley. We have all participated in a kidnapping. Those are illegal acts, in case you forgot—and Vanda has a lot of friends. What I’m hearing from Anne is he may have a connection with the president.”
“Vanda is done,” I say stubbornly. “He is never going to leave that basement alive. And if the president is complicit in protecting him, that’s just one more reason he needs to be removed from office.”
“Vanda is done,” she agrees. “So are you. Anne may have a job for you, but I don’t. I can’t trust you. I have no way to discipline you. You are off my squad.”
I think we both knew this was coming, ever since she told me about the new command structure. I don’t like the idea of stepping away, of turning over the welfare of my soldiers to another commander, but that happens in the army. I guess it happens with mercs too. Jaynie had damn well better take care of them. . . .
