by Linda Nagata
“Roger that, ma’am. I’m taking Harvey with me.”
“Go. Do it.”
“Jaynie, you damn well better not pass out while I’m gone. I don’t want to get back here and find Nolan on his own.”
“Just find Blue and Gold.”
“I will.”
“And don’t let them push the nukes overboard—and don’t get Harvey killed.”
• • • •
There are three paths to the cargo hold:
The first is an interior assault, down the stairs from the bridge and through the personnel deck—territory we know is held by the enemy.
The second is outside: down a ladder from the observation deck to the roof of the personnel deck, and then down another ladder. After that it’s a run halfway across the open-air container deck to the elevator—which is also held by the enemy, with the further drawback that even if we get aboard the elevator, we will have to ride it down past the personnel deck.
The third route skips the elevator. We run all the way across the container deck to where an uncovered stairway drops two stories down the side of the ship to a stern access door that opens directly into the hold.
I opt for the third route, betting it will give me the best chance to get close to Blue and Gold before Uther-Fen intercepts me—but to get across the container deck, Harvey and I are going to need covering fire. The bridge commands a view of almost all of the empty deck, so it makes a good vantage—except the heavy glass windows are in the way. Nolan has the breaching shotgun. He uses it to take out two of the panes.
A freezing wind howls in as he reloads and hands the shotgun to me. “Might be a good idea to take this.”
“Thanks.”
Our prisoners are shivering, so I spend a minute getting an emergency blanket out of my pack. I wrap that around the captain, and hand an IR-blocking cloak to the helmsman, while Harvey takes care of the navigator. Better than nothing.
“Get going, Shelley,” Jaynie says as she and Nolan set up by the empty window frames.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I get my pack on and sling the shotgun behind it. My HITR I hold in two hands. “Delphi, you there?”
“I’m here,” she says in her handler’s businesslike voice.
I turn to Harvey. “Ready?”
“Born ready, sir.”
“Let’s go, then.”
We crouch by the starboard door.
“On three,” Jaynie whispers. “One, two, three.”
I push the door open. Then I run bent over to the first ladder. It’s a two-meter jump to the roof of the personnel deck. I hit with a clang! then cross the roof in three strides. Harvey bangs down behind me as I make the second jump, down to the container deck. The shooting starts while I’m still in the air. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but there’s nowhere to hide anyway. The shocks on my dead sister soften the impact when I hit, and then I’m running all out beneath a roof of photovoltaic panels, my footplates banging against the aluminum deck. I hear Harvey pounding behind me. “One down,” Delphi says calmly as someone starts screaming. I don’t look to see who it is.
Halfway across the deck, I spot a figure at the top of the stairs. More shooting. This time I hear rounds whizzing from behind me, passing just above my shoulder; got to be coming from the bridge. I sure as fuck hope Jaynie’s aim is steady. I never ever want to go out by friendly fire.
The fusillade serves its purpose, forcing the figure to retreat down the stairs and out of sight. Seconds later I’m there, my HITR covering the stairway. The first flight drops to a platform, part of a catwalk on the side of the ship. The catwalk leads back to a second flight of stairs that’s aligned beneath the first. When I see my target turning to bound down the second flight, I shoot a three-round burst. The bullets punch through the upper stairs, knocking the target down. But when I peer between the stairs I can still see motion, so I shoot again. The movement stops.
“One down,” I report.
“Stairs clear?” Harvey asks as she pounds up beside me.
“No enemy in sight.”
“This one’s mine.”
“Harvey, no!”
Too late. She grabs the rail with her arm hook and uses it to pivot, launching herself from the container deck down to the first platform. A wave lifts the stern, showering her with spray as she hits with a loud bang! that shakes the whole stairway. She pivots, darting along the catwalk to the top of the next flight. I follow her lead, cursing silently because it’s my job to go first and Harvey damn well knows it.
When I reach the platform, I duck back against the side of the ship. A glance down shows me a body in a black Uther-Fen uniform draped on the stairs below. Harvey vaults it. She’s about to land at the foot of the stairs when someone out of my line of sight, no doubt assigned to guard the stern cargo doors, fires a three-shot burst that catches her in the air.
The only thing between her and the sea is a pipe railing.
The bullets impact her chest armor, spinning her around just as the stern drops away. She slams into the top rail, taking the impact on the lumbar struts of her dead sister and she flips over, dropping shoulders-down into the water with hardly a splash, her footplates disappearing last beneath the opaque gray surface and she is gone.
The ship moves on, while on my visor Harvey’s status icon updates to orange—missing. Not deceased. Just lost—gone too deep for her transmission to reach me.
But she is still alive.
She has to be. The bullets would not have penetrated her armor. The impact might have stopped her heart though. Certainly, it would have temporarily stopped her breathing.
She might not be conscious.
If she’s not conscious, she won’t be able to get out of her gear.
And her gear is pulling her straight to the bottom.
And if I go after her, my gear will pull me to the bottom too.
But she is alive.
All this in a half second of horror.
“Jaynie, cut the engines.”
Even as I say it, it’s done: The engines run idle, the wake ceases to churn, and the ship settles into the water, heaving in the swells, surrounded by the slow breathing of the sea.
“Thirty seconds,” Jaynie says. “If she doesn’t surface in thirty seconds, she’s gone.”
With my back to the ship’s side, I edge along the catwalk until I can peer down and around at the stern. No one’s in sight. This is the roll-on/roll-off access point. The closed doors to the cargo hold are recessed. Whoever shot Harvey is back there, where I can’t see them without exposing myself.
I look around at the ocean, look for some sign of Harvey, anything, a dark spot rising with the coming swell. “Delphi? Do you see her?”
“No.”
There’s nothing but blowing sea spray.
I tap into the feed from the muzzle cam of my HITR. Steadying my shoulder against the side of the ship, I reach with my weapon around the corner and do a quick sweep, faster than I can process, but my AI can handle the pace. It marks a target. I line up, and the AI fires a grenade.
As the explosion goes off I look again at the ocean.
Nothing.
I use my HITR to check around the corner again. My AI doesn’t find a target this time. I lean over to check for myself. There’s a burned body slumped against the closed cargo door.
I take one more look at the ocean. Nothing’s out there. I wonder if Harvey has drowned yet or if she’s still fighting for her life a hundred feet down.
In a tone of quiet fury Jaynie says, “She’s gone.” The ship’s engines engage again. “Shelley?”
“I’m here.”
She’s whispering, but gen-com boosts the volume. “We’re pinned down here. We can’t help you. But this is still a no-choice mission.”
“Roger that.”
“Roger that, Jaynie. I’m going in.”
“For Harvey,” she says.
“For Harvey.”
I get a hip up on the top railing, pivot over the top, and drop to the narrow stern deck, the noise I make mostly covered by the churning white wake behind the ship. “Delphi, you with me?”
“I’m with you, Shelley.” Her voice is soft, but controlled.
I step over the body to reach the access door and then, cautiously, I test the handle. The door is locked. I consider using the breaching shotgun, but I want my HITR in my hands when that door opens. So I copy the Uther-Fen strategy of rigging a grenade on the door handle, stepping away around the corner while it goes off. When I look again, the door is ajar.
Nolan speaks calmly over gen-com: “Enemy on the interior stairs.”
Jaynie answers: “Enemy on deck.”
The assault is on.
Masked by the rumble of the engines, the shooting that erupts sounds like distant firecrackers. I move swiftly, jamming the muzzle of my HITR through the smoking doorway to let my AI take a look inside. It marks no targets and no one shoots at me. Delphi says, “Clear to advance.” I push the door wider and go inside.
The lights are off, so night vision kicks in.
The green glow reveals a nearly empty bay. Two long rows of support columns divide the space lengthwise into thirds. Metal tie-downs form parallel rows in the floor. At the far end of the bay, close to the elevator door, is a stack of shipping pallets. A forklift is strapped down beside them. Closer to the middle are three armored personnel carriers, urban models like the ones rolling around in Manhattan. And closer to me, backed up against the port side and tied down with mesh chains, are two cargo vans. I can’t tell their color because in night vision they’re just different shades of green and white.
Jaynie and Nolan trade matter-of-fact phrases:
“Three more in the shadows.”
“I’ve got an angle.”
“Fire in the hole.”
Delphi says, “I’m taking you out of gen-com.” She doesn’t want me distracted.
My link icons update and I don’t hear the battle narration anymore.
I look around the bay one more time. My AI still doesn’t find a target so I have to conclude that only the two soldiers, already dead, were left to defend the stern while everyone else—every merc still alive—is engaged in the firefight upstairs.
So long as Uther-Fen doesn’t start lobbing grenades into the bridge, Jaynie and Nolan have a good chance of holding them off.
“Delphi, I’m moving in.”
“Roger that. Cleared to advance.”
I sprint for the vans, my footplates pounding against the deck.
Nothing happens. No one shoots at me.
I reach the first van. I think it’s the blue one. I grab the handle on the sliding door and jam it down. It’s locked. So I swap my HITR for the shotgun. Holding it parallel to the van and angled down on the lock, I fire. A car alarm goes off, echoing in the bay as the door pops out a couple of inches. I slide it open. My helmet cams record everything. The video data flows to the satellite relay in my pack, which boosts the signal to Cryptic Arrow’s account, and from there it shoots around the globe to Delphi. My overlay records too.
“Fuck,” I whisper, staring at the van’s cargo area. “Delphi, is that it?”
My helmet mutes the bleating alarm while enhancing her voice. “Stand by.”
Inside the van is a massive gray cylinder, close to a meter in diameter and almost as high, bolted to the floor. There’s a keypad—my guess is that it’s a digital lock—placed next to a seam that probably marks the edge of a door.
Delphi says, “We have confirmation.” She’s trying hard to hold on to her handler’s calm diction, but I can hear a tremor in her voice. “The container you’re looking at is a lead shielding to limit leakage of detectable radiation. It’s the same structure used in the unexploded weapons recovered on Coma Day. The nuclear device is within. Don’t try to open it.”
“I won’t.”
“They want you to check the other van.”
“Roger that.”
“Please be careful.”
I don’t want to stand in the tight place between the two vehicles, so I walk around to the other side. On the way, I eye the APCs and the forklift; I scowl at the elevator . . . but nothing moves except the deck as it rolls with the waves. Again, I use the breaching shotgun—and set another alarm blaring.
Inside the second van is another gray cylinder.
Whatever else happens, we did the right thing coming here. That’s what I tell myself. Then I flash on Harvey, floating head-down in lightless, freezing waters.
Did we do the right thing?
My focus has slipped. Delphi has to jar me back to the present. “What’s that sound? Shelley, do you hear it?”
The helmet brings me the hum of an electric motor. I swing around to see the elevator doors sliding open. Instinct takes over. I bring my weapon up, ready to launch a grenade—but it’s not my HITR I’m holding. It’s the shotgun. The unfamiliar shape of the weapon makes me hesitate.
“Shoot!” Delphi orders.
I pull the trigger—too late. A barrage of shots hammers into my visor—an impact that puts me on the floor. I hear Delphi yelling at me, “Get up, Shelley. Now. Now. Get up!”
I would like to.
I just don’t remember how.
“Can’t see,” I whisper.
“Your visor’s broken. Take your helmet off.”
I’m not supposed to do that. I can’t remember how to do it anyway.
“You’ve got a bad concussion, Shelley.”
I hear something. Running footsteps. Heavy steps. At least two people.
From somewhere above me, a man says, “Stunned.”
I feel the press of cold steel against my throat, a sensation that has the positive effect of nailing me back into my body. I’m on my side, propped up by the mass of my backpack.
“No.” The same man. “Don’t kill him. Not yet.”
I feel my hands again. I flex my fingers.
The pressure of steel withdraws, but not the pressure from Delphi: “Shelley, goddamn it! You need to move now! There’s a pistol in a holster on your chest.”
She’s right. I reach for it. Someone grabs my wrist—a bad move on their part, since I’m still in my dead sister. I swing my arm as hard as I can and feel a satisfying impact, accompanied by a gasp, a moan. I hammer whatever it is again and the moaning stops.
A gun goes off. Sensory feedback hammers up my left thigh, into my spine—a special kind of pain, the kind that comes from my robot legs. I sit up, wrenching off my helmet and screaming, a five-second roar of agony. My legs shouldn’t generate pain at this level. This is more than maximum. I stare at the slider icon at the bottom of my overlay, the one that lets me control the level of pain I feel from the legs, and I slide it down to fucking nothing—
The gun goes off again. I see it this time: He shoots out my right knee.
I should feel nothing.
But my nerves catch fire. I swear they turn molten, burn the inside of my body to ash. I writhe and reach for the legs, wanting to jettison them, to remove them, to make them stop telling me what I don’t want to know, that they are scrap metal.Twisted, broken, circuit-melted scrap metal—
“You’re Shelley, aren’t you?” the man’s voice says. It’s an American accent. “King David himself. Those legs give you away every time.”
My shoulders are heaving, I’m trembling, but the pain has peaked. I assess my position. The only light is what’s spilling through the doorway where I came in, but it’s enough to tell me I’m on the floor alongside the second van. The merc I hit is an unconsci
ous heap of meat beside me. He looks in bad shape: his nose broken, front teeth missing, blood pooling in his open mouth.
I look up at the surviving merc. I’ve never seen him before. He’s at least six feet, broad shouldered, darkly tanned skin, maybe Hispanic, maybe Greek. I don’t know, I don’t care.
“Get your pack off,” he says.
I do it.
“Now strip out of that exoskeleton, nice and slow, or I’ll blow your elbow next and that will hurt even more.”
I nod.
“Start with the arms.”
I do what he says, uncinching my arms, thinking, See, Jaynie? I don’t want to die.
The shoulder frame doesn’t fall to the ground, but it also doesn’t move with me when I lean forward to uncinch my robot legs. I try to assess the damage. There’s not much to see: just holes in the pant legs. No blood, of course. Also, no machine parts. I stretch farther to uncinch my ankles. That’s when I know for sure my legs are broken. The lower legs are loose inside my pants, no longer attached to my thighs.
I hesitate too long. He raps the muzzle of his weapon against the back of my head, igniting a blinding wave of pain inside my skull and I almost puke. I try to sit up straight again, but he won’t let me. He’s got his hand pressed against the back of my head and his gun in my ear. If he pulls the trigger, maybe that will stop the hammering agony in my skull.
“Very slowly. Take the pistol out. Two fingers. And pitch it.”
He’s worried about the pistol in my chest holster. I do exactly what he says. The pistol rattles away under the van.
“Now the knife.”
I pull out the knife on my belt. I’ve never used a knife in combat anyway. I pitch it away, but he doesn’t let me sit up. He wants to talk. That’s fine with me.
“I knew the men you killed at Black Cross, and the ones who died in Alaska.”
My left hand is still curled under my chest. Slowly, very slowly, I use it to reach inside my vest.
