by KL Mabbs
Chapter 15 Samantha
Samantha Ariyan felt tears, hot and salty as they dripped over her cheeks, the slight makeup she wore for this occasion running over her face. She knew her eyes would be as dark as her mascara, dripping like viscera from a belly wound.
The day was clear. Sunlight and trees affected the ground like mirrors, flashing like party favours. Everything else was dark. The dress uniforms, the suits, and the veils of the women that had come to see Ahmed at his final resting place. A military funeral. His coffin draped with the flag of his allegiance, hers too.
They said the words; the rituals that would make everybody feel better. Everyone but her. She shifted her stance, her heels threatening to dig into the soft grass-lined earth and upset her balance.
She already had Ahmed’s possessions, sent to her via military transport. The same one that had shipped his body home. They had been hand delivered by a military courier, a priest, according to the pins on his shoulder lapels. Consolation and bereavement support at the same time. A bloody counsellor whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t.
After she had sent him away, she’d opened the bag, sealed from prying hands, and found . . . paper and plastic, medals. The things that told her who her son was, his identity, the symptoms of his courage. Except for the watch. Ahmed had refused to wear one since he was six and learned what time meant. How it constrained. But he was never late for his appointments. The things that mattered in his life.
She was wearing that watch now. “I miss you my son . . . rest well.” Felt it vibrate in harmony to the torture of her lungs, heaving for a breath while her tears slipped into the handkerchief in her hands.
Her wrist became warm, as if sand, silken smooth, had flowed over her skin filling any surface deviations. It was a very strange feeling. She took a deep breath. Watched her son being lowered into the ground, her hand rubbing at the band around her wrist.
Samantha sat in her car and watched the man’s house. One of Ahmed’s companions. Boyen. The Irishman. Ahmed’s letters had called him a silver-tongued devil. Knowing her son’s humour, it didn’t refer to the man’s skill at speech.
She could see Boyen in the front room through the large plate window. His hair was dark, almost black, his body lean, as tanned as hers. She remembered him. Military cut from exercise and war. Hazard conditions. Some men thrived in those kinds of situations. They were called soldiers. Boyen’s records fit that description. All the men in her son’s unit did. They excelled. But they were alive, her son wasn’t.
Her fault.
The charm bracelet she wore rang with a distinctive sound, a high tone with a bell-like quality. The adaptive machine had called herself “Sammy” and her voice was very feminine. It was adaptive; she had proved that to Samantha at the beginning of their relationship, in the first few days, when she had started to think in the linear mode that Samantha often berated herself for when she didn’t see something—selective thought, obsession, it didn’t matter. She knew about it and had learned to correct for it. The hyper-alert stimulants of today made it almost impossible to miss things. But Sammy hadn't learned how to re-order that linearity yet. Sammy though, was giving her an agility of mind she hadn’t known since she was thirty, and without stims.
She slipped out of the electric vehicle that the government lent its higher ranked officials. The door humming shut was louder than the engine; a loud click told her the door had locked. Her palm print would unlock it when she was ready to leave.
Sweat trickled down the inside of her blouse, her bra picking up the liquid, the silk wicking the fluid away. She rubbed her hands together. What would Boyen say? Could he tell her what Michael Scott had been unwilling to? Or unable? How did he do it? Or they—since none of them were really talking about the end of the war even though they had been debriefed. And they retired after, none of them willing to stay in the army. But then, they hadn’t left her much choice, not with the world needing heroes. She had no grounds to coerce them back into a new enlistment. But the resources the government had lost would take months or years to convert back to a usable form. And Saudi Arabia, they were worse off than the States had been. They had no choice but to join the Swedish Accord now.
Her feet echoed on the paving stones tucked into the emerald of the grass that covered the front lawn. A gnome peered at her from under the edge of a willow tree as its leaves brushed the ground. Hide and seek with porcelain faerie folk.
She raised a hand to knock on the door. Staggered, and then caught herself when it swung open. “Jamie Boyen.”
“General . . . Ariyan. I saw you in the car. Took you long enough to come in.” Condensation from two beers tickled his hand, ran in rivulets over the smooth skin. He raised one for her to take. Her charm bracelet chimed as she reached for the liquid-cooled glass. “For Ahmed,” he said, taking a drink from the second bottle. His eyes were blurry, bloodshot. Not enough sleep had crossed them since the funeral. How many months ago? Three.
“For Ahmed.” She thought her eyes would start to match his hand, but he wiped the moisture away on his jeans. She didn’t feel comfortable wiping away her own tears, so they welled up, hung there as a magnifying glass until she could back them down with a deep breath.
“Thank you, Jamie. I wanted to . . . I hoped we could talk.”
“Aye. Come in.” He backed away, brushing clothes out of the way as he did. The house wasn’t military clean anymore. The army trained for competence and organization. Most people kept the habit off duty, not him. Not now.
She was led to the living room, unkempt as well. Sparse, bare, packing boxes in the corner, some empty. More clothes, beer and liquor bottles lined up in parade. Perfect order. The labels all facing out towards the street. She took a seat and crossed her legs, her hand resting across her lap. The beer bottle dripping condensation onto her dress skirt.
“I’m having nightmares. Sweet Aire is helping.” He raked a hand over his face, as if he could drag the visions away. “Oh God, I didn’t mean to speak of . . .”
“ . . . Home. Wherever you find comfort, Jamie,” Samantha said. She sipped from the beer. A heavy malt, thick as silt from the bottom of a river, but it held the taste of fields, fertile, with an age behind it. “Good beer.”
He looked up from under ragged hair and burnt-out eyes. “Aye, from home. Sweet Aire. That’s it.”
Samantha looked at the label on the beer, O’Hara’s Celtic Stout. “I’m not sleeping well either. I imagine all of you . . .”
“Not Michael. He doesn’t remember. We all want to forget. He’s just lost somewhere.”
“Still.” She stared at him, a moment only. He couldn’t take the scrutiny. He hid his eyes in his hands and the dark beer resided there, forgotten. Samantha drank. Closing her eyes and savouring the taste of ancient grains. Captain Scott’s memory loss should have come back by now. Samantha knew it wasn’t his fault Ahmed was dead. She blamed herself. It was her orders that put them there. Her drive for control when he was younger.
“Did Ahmed have a computer?”
Boyen’s body jerked. Beer spilled over his hand and dripped onto his belt buckle. She noticed it for the first time; a map of Ireland nestled between the clasps for the leather strap.
“Ah, aye, a field unit, like all soldiers. They’re too literal for my liking.” His eyes shifted again.
So, they don’t talk about it. Just like Sammy hasn’t. Can the machine tell where the others are? She would keep an eye on her son’s teammates. But today . . . “Tell me about Ahmed. Please. Whatever you can remember.”
“Aye. He liked to laugh. Always caught in a single moment.”
Samantha closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the Irish accent that talked of her son. It added a sweet richness to the words and memories from the man in front of her. She sighed, and let the tears come, this time, in this place, with a man who had loved her son, the way only soldiers can.
She heard a chime, rich and golden, as if Sammy w
as echoing her thoughts.
Chapter 16 Kerrigan
Kerrigan was an army brat, a term that, when he was young, meant he was being insulted by the kids at whatever school or base he was on that year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. A year. A whole year in one place. It had never happened to him before. He used to count the days before he would have to move. Once, he got to two hundred days before it happened again. He went through puberty twice—not because he was a freak, but because he was in two different schools for the length of time that his voice changed and his body started factoring bacteria by the Petri dish. One school was bad enough, but they would have been used to him by the time the change was over, and the ribbing would have died down. But no, it didn’t happen that way. He was the freak that got to experience every misery of childhood twice. Chicken pox, Influenza, the same strain once from both sides of the continent. Puberty. Then, after the seventh move, he was able to count to three hundred and sixty-six days. A leap year. He was fifteen. Then he got the news.
“No. No. No. I hate you!” he screamed at his mother and father. “I hate this! Every time we move. It’s . . . it’s fucked up. It’s the most miserable fucking thing in the world.”
“Don’t swear, son,” they both said it at the same time.
“Fuck you.”
The interview was in a coffee shop. The ad had asked for a military man versed in security, shipping specialties, and software development. An odd combination.
She said she’d be wearing a uniform. She didn’t say she was a fucking Four-Star General. She also didn’t say she was General Samantha Ariyan, Liaison to the Warsaw Commons and the United Nations and the Swedish Accord.
Rumour had it she was responsible for the Oil Wars ending.
Lieutenant Zach Kerrigan was sure it was media hype. She was better looking than the holo-image in the e-papers, but her eyes had been red and puffy, as if she’d been crying for several days in a row. She was Eurasian in cast, her hair the thick, slinky black of an Asian. Small nose, large eyes, green as Ireland’s hills. Her rank and training put her at almost fifty, if she had followed the regular progression through the ranks. She didn’t look it.
Zach walked over, introduced himself, and shook hands. It was a warm, firm, handshake. A bell-like sound rang from the old-style charm bracelet hanging from her wrist as his fingers brushed it. She wore no other jewellery though. Not even earrings. The handshake left him with a good impression of the woman.
“Hello, ma’am.”
“Samantha, Lieutenant Kerrigan. Please.”
“Most people call me Kerrigan.”
“Very well. Tell me about yourself, Zach.”
“I have a military background. Two years in the Oil Wars, early on, then five in security with a software company. Went back to night school for a degree in AI coding. Working all the time.”
“Busy man. I have a software algorithm to show you.” She passed a slip of e-paper over to the man.
He looked at the paper, his brow screwed up in concentration. “How many have you shown this to?”
“Sixteen.”
“Did you ask them to finish it for you as proof of their qualifications?”
“Yes. The same as I’m asking you.”
“Let me guess, eight couldn’t tell you what it was . . .”
“Ten . . .”
“Four barely understood it . . .”
“Tried to bluff me, but couldn’t finish it.” She draped a hand over her thigh, her legs crossed, her very shapely legs—Zach brought his eyes back to the paper.
“There might be twenty people in the world that could finish this for you. Most are too old to travel. Several are still in school and need permission. One has gone missing.”
“Hmmm. I can’t finish this myself, but I can tell when a person is lying to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then finish it.”
“I’ll take an hour, maybe two.”
“Good answer. I’ll wait. In the meantime, I’ll take any personal data devices you have on you.”
Kerrigan was being studied as he worked. He could feel it like a steady wind blowing, a foehn or maybe a sirocco. Too warm for his liking. But her skin colour, and dark hair, her green eyes, all of these spoke of much warmer things than what he should be thinking about in a woman who was about to be his boss.
Kerrigan sat with Samantha at the kitchen table in her home. The walls were bright and she was happier than she had been since the funeral. Not that Zach brought that up. When she did though, he listened, let her talk as much as she would of it. And he didn’t interrupt. That left people lost sometimes, trying to gather thoughts that were so fragile. Breakable, just like them. Zach thought he might be part of why she was happier. He didn’t hope for anything romantic. Not often at least. But the questions that she asked, the passions she spoke with, it resonated.
With his passion.
Making hers stronger, that much he could tell. The energy that flowed between them kept being magnified, back and forth.
He could see that in her eyes. And not just for the work.
“More coffee, Zach.”
“Please, General.”
“You don't hold rank, Kerrigan, and you’re in my house, not my office. No need for the formality.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” But he felt more comfortable that way, it was easy, and General Ariyan fell into just as often, no matter what she said.
“Fine, be that way.” But when she returned with coffee, her hand found his shoulder as she placed the coffee cup in front of him. She looked down at him and smiled, then lowered herself into her seat, wrapping her hands around her own cup. Her charm bracelet sliding down to her shirtsleeve. He stared at it for a moment, watched her doing the same, her eyes taking on a look of fondness. She looked demure, just for a moment. Enough to make him wonder what it would be like to touch her, for real, and not just the casual touch between friends.
He looked at her hands. For Zach, it was eyes and hands that took his focus. The rest was nice, but there was more information in those two body parts than others. When he looked up, her eyes had gone wide, as if he had surprised her.
“Who goes over my calculations?” he asked.
“A computer, with special . . . algorithms. A program.”
Doubt crossed his face. “It’s brilliant.”
“Yes.”
“We jump months every time you run my software through it. And I can see why it comes next in the programming, but I never would have thought of it. To do it that way.”
“We’re almost ready to market this. The structure is in place.”
“We’re years away.”
“No. Two more passes and I think we’ll have it.” She reached out and touched his hand. A gentle pat, then she slid her fingers off his warm skin. Zach’s eyes had gone wide, the blue looking more like a cobalt than the Caribbean Sea.
“I need you to do something for me, Zach.”
“Sure.”
“I want you to find something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“You’re looking for a personal item that these men would have.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and passed it to him. “A watch, a custom belt buckle. Something that—fits their personality. It’ll be undamaged in any state you find it.”
“And that’s all I get.”
“Yes.”
Zach raised an eyebrow at her.
“That’s all I can tell you.”
Kerrigan wasn’t Canadian Military anymore, but for three years now he had handled security for her private business interests: as bodyguard, shipment specialist, and even military adviser. He was one of her software development specialists.
And a spy with very specific targets.
All on ex-military men. Boyen, and then Huer. Dead from accidents. Or so it was reported to the papers. One of them could have been an accident, the way he had be
en spread across the pavement. His bike a trail of twisted metal around him. That was only a few days ago.
Samantha always had him looking for something personal related to the men. A possession of some kind. She’d actually told him what one could be: a belt buckle that had a map of Ireland embossed on it. If she wanted a belt buckle she could have his . . . he shut that thought down fast. Real fast. But over the years that was getting more difficult.
Her son’s commanding officer was his target this week. In all the meetings he’d had with the General, none had included kill orders. He wasn’t sure that meant anything though. General Samantha Ariyan was decidedly ruthless in her business decisions.
Today he was in the Canadian Rockies. The weather was cold, even in thermal gear, though the tent he was in kept most of that away from him. Through the personal computer he used—one of the new units Samantha and he had marketed—he watched her walk into her office and take a chair. She wore a standard uniform, blouse, and skirt, sharp cut jacket, unbuttoned and not showing any skin that should entice a man. It never worked for him because everything about her was pure sexuality.
“What’s the progress on Captain Scott?” She reached into the ever-present bowl of protein and sugar; today it was cashews and raisins. Her charm bracelet tinkled against the rim of the bowl.
“We hijacked an old surveillance satellite, from before the Oil Wars. It passes over the Rockies every hundred minutes or so. The feed is being routed to your usual address. It’s the best we can do without alerting anyone,” Lieutenant Zach Kerrigan said. He rubbed his thumb over the red hair of his eyebrow, a habit he had recently picked up. Lately he had found Samantha too appealing and he was trying to hide that fact. The habit came about when he noticed himself staring. To Kerrigan, it felt far too obvious.
“And then there's AmeraCorp.”
