by Linda Nagata
Jaynie gestures at one of the vehicles. “Get inside. I’ll be right back.”
Nolan and Flynn follow her behind the van. I start to get in, but then I hear a familiar low buzz. It makes the hair on my arms stand on end. I turn, ready to fight or flee, but all I see is one of Joby’s robo-bugs buzzing out of the hallway past the propped-open fire door. A plastic equipment case is lying open on the floor. Five robo-bugs are already nestled into slots in the gray packing material that fills both sides of the case. The last robo-bug lands on the case, walks to the empty slot, settles into it, and goes quiescent. One of the Squad Two soldiers closes the case and picks it up.
“Lieutenant Shelley.”
I recoil, the voice is so unexpected. I’ve let my guard down; I’ve let a stranger get within arm’s reach of me without realizing he was there. The skullnet icon lights up, schooling me to calm as I turn to see Squad Two’s CO.
He’s watching me cautiously: a lean man of moderate height, carrying twice my years. “Didn’t mean to startle you, Lieutenant,” he says in a gentler voice. “I just wanted to say it’s an honor to meet you.”
I gather myself enough that I can provide the ritual answer: “Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming after me.”
Nolan shows up at my side. His helmet and bones have been exchanged for farsights. “Let’s go, LT.”
I nod and follow him into the van’s third seat. Jaynie climbs in behind me. Two strangers come in next. They look at me with triumphant smiles as they slide into the middle seat.
“Welcome back, Lieutenant.”
“It was a fucking joy to help get you out of there, sir.”
The door slides shut and the light goes out. There are no windows in the back of the van. It feels like a prison cell.
But another light comes on when the front doors open. Flynn gets into the shotgun seat. Her gloved hands grip her HITR as she holds it muzzle-down between her legs. Her seat is pushed back far enough that she has room to swing it into action if she needs to.
The driver looks at us as she gets in. “All secure?”
“Roger that,” Jaynie answers. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
A ramp takes us out of the garage, into predawn darkness. I have no idea where we are. I can see only a little through the front windshield, enough to know we’re driving past empty parking lots and the glass-block buildings of an office park. The streetlights are out and there are no lights behind the office windows, no lights in the parking lots. Just moonlight, gleaming against intact glass, but swallowed up by the depthless dark that marks a scattering of broken windows, some in every building we pass.
I spot a real-estate sign standing in a garden of weeds, boldly proclaiming premium office space available January 4 of this year—that would have been less than two months after Coma Day.
A feral cat dashes across a sidewalk shot through with weeds—and a new worry kicks in. God knows what Shiloh packed into my head . . . an electronic IED maybe, programmed to automatically overload my skullnet and bring me down if I get away. I tense. Maybe I start breathing a little fast, sweating, I don’t know, but Jaynie turns to look at me. “Easy, Shelley. We’re doing okay.”
“My overlay is a mess. Completely compromised.”
Delphi speaks over gen-com. “Roger that. We’re going to reformat your system. But that means you’ll lose anything personal—”
“I’ll get it from backup.”
“—and you’ll be isolated for at least an hour.”
“Shit.”
“It needs to be done,” she insists. “Like you said—”
“I know, I’m compromised, so do it—but Jesus, I miss you, Delphi. Have you been okay?”
Her response is strictly professional. “Initiating reformat.”
It leaves me with a hollow feeling in my gut. “Wait—”
I’m kicked out of gen-com. My display blanks except for a tiny orange-yellow counter in the lower left: 1%, it tells me. And after many seconds pass, 2%.
That feeling when you know your lover has started cutting the bonds? Yeah, I have that.
“It’s been really hard on her,” Jaynie says, “not knowing if you were dead or alive . . . or being tortured.”
“I understand.” I keep my gaze fixed on the night beyond the windshield as the van climbs a ramp to a freeway. No one else says anything. “Thanks for coming after me, by the way.”
“We’re in this together.”
“Not many of us left,” Nolan adds.
After a few minutes, I think to ask where we’re going.
“Wyoming,” Jaynie answers. “That’s our headquarters. With luck, you’ll get there this time.”
• • • •
Maybe it’s luck or maybe it’s in the script, but we get there, arriving by chartered jet late that afternoon. At the airfield where we land, there’s a single hangar and two fuel tanks, one labeled Aviation. On the opposite side of the runway, sheep graze in pastures fenced with barbed wire. It’s hot outside and the terrain is mostly flat, but the air feels thin in my lungs, confirming we’re on the high plains.
Set back from the airfield is a large garage with four roll-up doors, all closed. Farther away but linked to the airfield by an asphalt driveway is a sprawling, two-story ranch house. It has a wraparound veranda and an encircling lawn planted with shade trees. There’s a greenhouse on the far side of the lawn. When people talk about the American dream, I think they mean a place like this.
Squad Two forms a line to offload the gear into two waiting pickup trucks. Jaynie leaves the work to them. “Come on,” she says, and the four of us walk together to the house.
AGAINST THE BEAST
* * *
EPISODE 3:
VERTIGO GATE
COLONEL RAWLINGS MEETS US ON the veranda. He ignores my county-jail attire and sticks out his hand. “It’s good to have you back, Lieutenant. One less gone than we first believed.”
I clasp his hand. “Too many gone, sir.”
His eyes narrow in anger, but it’s not directed at me. He’s looking into the past. “Harvey’s death was tragic, but it was a risk of the mission—a mission that proved successful, and saved God knows how many thousands of lives. But what happened in Brunswick”—his gaze fixes on me again—“there is no excuse for it. We failed. Our intelligence failed.” He turns to Jaynie. “We were blindsided, and your squad paid the price.”
Rawlings is a pompous old fart, and while I know he’s willing to sacrifice the soldiers under his command, I also know he will never sell out or betray the mission. Maybe I don’t like him personally, but I can respect that.
He steps back, holding the door open. “Come inside. Vasquez, you and Shelley have fifteen minutes to shower and change. Then I want you both downstairs to debrief Black Phoenix.”
I follow Jaynie into the house. The interior surprises me with an absence of faux-Western trappings. Instead the decor is modern, with steel accents and a black, gray, and white color scheme. I look around the great room, hoping to see Delphi, but she isn’t there, so I ask Rawlings. “Sir, I need to see Delphi—Karin—where is she?”
“Downstairs, involved in the intelligence analysis. I’ll make sure she knows you’re here.”
• • • •
We don’t go upstairs. “Squad Two’s quartered up there,” Nolan explains as he shows me to a hallway off the great room. I assumed this was a family home, but the interior is laid out more like a guest lodge or a small hotel. Most of the rooms are upstairs, but off the downstairs hallway are four bedrooms, each with its own bath. Nolan opens the door to my assigned quarters. “All yours,” he says. A fresh combat uniform, anonymous gray, is waiting for me on the bed.
I’m in the shower, washing a depilatory off my face along with two weeks’ growth of beard when Delphi comes in, so quiet it takes me a few seconds to realize s
he’s there, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, no smile, her bright blue eyes watching me warily through the steam. “Jesus, Delphi.” I shut off the water, open the shower door, grab a towel, and use it to dry off as much as I can in the two steps it takes me to reach her. Then I’ve got my arms around her, and if she’s not holding me as closely as I’d like, at least she’s not pushing me away. “Are you glad I came back?”
“Don’t be an asshole! Of course I’m glad . . . and Rawlings is expecting you downstairs in six minutes.” She’s on the verge of tears; I can hear it in her voice, but she tries to hide it behind her scolding. “For God’s sake, would you buzz your hair? You look like a derelict. Here. There should be clippers in one of the drawers.”
She pulls away from me and goes to look for the clippers, slamming drawers until she finds them.
“Why are you angry?”
“Take care of your hair.” She retreats to the bathroom doorway, watching with her arms crossed as I begin to restore a military discipline to my hair. I’m halfway done when she speaks over the clippers’ soft buzz. “Do you remember what I told you about Black Cross? That I thought you’d died there?”
I watch myself in the mirror as more black hair falls into the sink. “I remember.”
“It was like déjà vu when you disappeared from all my sensors on the cargo deck of the Non-Negotiable.”
“I reported in as soon—”
“And then the incident at Brunswick. We had no idea who took you. They wore masks and we couldn’t identify the voices. But we knew exactly how they slammed you, because your friend Joby called and told us.”
I don’t think Joby really qualifies as my friend, but I don’t correct her. “Jaynie said something about that.”
“Are you done with your hair? Get dressed.”
She moves out of the doorway so I can get to the fresh uniform laid out on the bed.
“Nakagawa tried to call you, to let you know the program he had running on your overlay was compromised. An assistant had reset the access and sold the key—that’s what he said, anyway. But you didn’t answer calls or respond to e-mails. Then he got the package, the one Flynn posted for you, so he called the number on the packing slip. That was Shima’s number, but it forwarded to Rawlings. So we knew. Someone with money and determination and an insider’s technical skills had taken you. We assumed Uther-Fen, or the president’s private army. Either way, we’d never get you back.”
“There was no way I was ever going to escape, Delphi. They had me locked down tight. But I tried to get word out to you. I got far enough one day to get an outside link.”
I’m pulling on the jacket of my uniform when I’m finally rewarded with a little smile. “You did,” she whispers. “That was Joby’s program too. That was the start of mission planning for Black Phoenix.”
She lets me kiss her after that, but it’s not the same. It’s like I can taste her reluctance. I don’t think I’m forgiven. Maybe I never will be.
• • • •
Jaynie is waiting for us at the end of the hall. We head down to the basement, where I’m impressed to find a dedicated briefing room with three short rows of theater seats, a podium, and a large monitor on the wall. All that’s lacking is analysts, but it turns out they’re attending virtually over what the organization must believe is a secure line.
Good luck with that.
Rawlings is already there, in the front row. I sit at the opposite end, leaving a seat between us for Delphi, but she doesn’t sit down. Instead, she takes up a post under one of the glassy camera eyes in the front corner of the room, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed. I wait to catch her eye, but she doesn’t look at me.
Jaynie slides into the second row, taking the center seat.
A soothing, androgynous voice issues from a hidden speaker. “For security purposes, we want to limit knowledge of the analysts who are participating in this debriefing, so we will be using a shared synthetic voice. You can address us as Jones.”
I don’t like synthetic voices, they irritate me, but at least this one isn’t a booming masculine threat like the voice I used aboard the Non-Negotiable.
First, Jones asks me to describe what happened in the hangar. I don’t have much to offer. I go into more detail about waking up, first with a hood on, and then later, in my cell. The analysts ask questions, backtracking over and over again. They want to know everything I can remember about Crow and the Silent One. They question me closely about the manipulation of my skullnet, about the effect of the Taser on my equipment, about my escape attempt, and about Shiloh’s knowledge of the Red and what she believed its goals to be. None of my experience was recorded—not by me, anyway—so I do my best to remember all the details I can.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems to me that despite the synthetic voice, I can hear a growing excitement in the cadence of the questions, as if we’re getting closer to the subject that really interests them. We’re two hours into the debriefing when the monitor lights up with an image of the mock-up of the Semak Hermitage.
“Let’s talk about this,” Jones says.
I look at Delphi. She’s not looking at the screen and she’s not wearing farsights. She’s watching me. That tells me she’s seen the image before, she’s had time to think about it, and maybe she’s guessed its purpose.
I feel ashamed that I agreed to do the mission, that I was training to do it—but shame or not, the compulsion is still there. I ask myself: Is it only because of the Red, playing puppet master? Or do I go along with the prompts because I’m an adrenaline junkie out to be the hero no matter how crazy the mission? Shiloh said people like me don’t want peace. We want challenges. Maybe she was right.
I watch anger build in Delphi’s eyes and I swear to God she can read my mind. So I look away. I look at the screen.
“Lieutenant Shelley,” Jones prompts, “can you identify the image?”
“Yes. It’s a mock-up of the Sunrise Fifteen orbital habitat owned and occupied by a dragon named Eduard Semak.”
“What was Exalt Communications’ interest in the Semak Hermitage?”
The skullnet icon remains dark, but a feeling comes over me anyway that I should be very careful just how much I say.
“They believed Semak was in control of a number of nuclear devices, and that intel on the location of his weapons cache could be recovered from his overlay. So Shiloh developed a mission to visit him in orbit and extract the data. The mock-up was created so I could familiarize myself with the layout and components of the habitat.”
“You?” Jaynie asks, catching me by surprise. It’s the first time she’s spoken since we entered the briefing room.
I turn to look at her, sitting in the row behind me. Her elegant eyebrows are raised and there’s a cold half smile on her full lips that tells me she already knows what Exalt, and Shiloh, were really after.
It’s not a subject I want to talk about in front of Rawlings and his analysts.
“Listen,” I say, standing up. “I need a break. I’ve got to get some air.”
I give Jaynie a nod, hoping she’ll follow me as I head out. Delphi looks startled. I signal her too and then trot up the stairs, ignoring the objections of both Rawlings and Jones. At the top, I glance back. Jaynie and Delphi are behind me. Both look puzzled, but they’re following, just as I hoped.
I head outside to the veranda, and then down the stairs to the driveway. Twilight is settling in. I slow my pace until Jaynie and Delphi catch up, and then we walk together toward the airfield, my titanium feet padding against the driveway as crickets bombard the evening with their buzzing and chirping competitions. Without being told, Jaynie takes off her farsights and turns them off. I check my overlay to confirm it’s not recording.
“What is going on with you?” Delphi demands in an angry whisper.
I keep my voice low as I tell her
the truth. “Shiloh wanted me to take the mission because she believed the Red would back me.”
“And you agreed to do it?”
She’s furious, but I’m not going to lie. “You know how it is, Delphi. I had a feeling.”
“Fucking King David,” Jaynie says softly. “You know, Shelley, I was half dead on that ship, but I swear I remember you promising you were done. No more, you said. But now the Red wants to play you—run you like a puppet again—and you’re okay with it.”
Sometimes you’re called to do a thing. That’s just the way it is. But it’s not an argument I can win, so I skip it and go on to the mission specifics. “With the organization’s backing, we can still do the mission. It needs doing, and it’s only a two-person op. Me, and the spaceplane pilot. So the risk to life is minimal.”
“Fuck that,” Jaynie says. “If Cryptic Arrow gets behind this, I’m going.”
“You can’t. The mission plan specifies—”
“Are the nukes real?”
I sigh, postponing the argument. “They have to be real. The Red would know, right? But the nukes were just Shiloh’s excuse. The cover action.”
Jaynie nods. She already had the motive figured out back in the briefing room. “It was Semak’s fortune they were after.”
“Yes, and we can go after it now, if we want to.”
Delphi comes to an abrupt halt.
Jaynie steps away, staring at me. “Joking, right?”
“No.”
Delphi looks to be in shock. “You can’t be thinking of stealing that money. It doesn’t fit your psych profile. Not at all.”
The crickets are chirping and buzzing, and a light wind is rustling the grass. Ten years ago that might have been enough to cover our conversation. Now? A good processor could filter out everything but our whispers—but only if Rawlings has listening devices set up along the road. I’m guessing he doesn’t.
