by R. K. Syrus
“That’s right. I can only save one. But it never said anything about what both of us, me and Sarge together, could do. Ain’t that a Carolina peach?”
A no-win situation just means: try harder. Sienna truly believes that.
6
Jofi would be a truly disgusting person if he had an ounce of guts. Sienna has more respect for the mechBrain. Did some crusty fart in the subbasement of the Pentagon tell Jofi to deliberately scuttle Sidewinder? Just over some sort of petty revenge? Whatever. Sienna has to play this out. The second light on her mission fob is going to turn green. It is. It has to.
I wish I had some leverage on this goof.
The symptoms Jofi has could be from cheap antibiotics. But he’s an MD. He works at Baker. He has access to all the top-line anti-microbial drugs he wants, unless…
Dr. Cadaver Nails interrupts. “It was Dr. Theodora McKnight who performed the emergency C-section that delivered you on a military base. You were the only infant born on that base and came into the world suffering from deep lacerations.”
He must have dug up this part of her personal history on his own. That’s just creepy.
“These wounds, the scars which still present on your body, they were the result of the abdominal stabbing of a young Khorasani woman. A girl, really, who was heavily pregnant. Your birth mother. You’re fortunate someone with Dr. McKnight’s surgical skill was there.”
“Lucky me,” Sienna says. “And yeah, I have scars. They’ve been there as long as I can remember. As you can see from my physical, they don’t slow me down. And I don’t have a breakdown when I see them in the mirror, if that’s your next question.”
“It wasn’t.”
It sure was, you weasel.
“And what’s it got to do with my fitness to lead this mission?”
“Violence,” Jofi says. “And not the organized sort the chain of command approves of. Helter-skelter violence seems to follow you around. And worse. You’re a survivor.”
He opens a file folder.
“It was the worst terrorist atrocity committed on US soil in thirty years,” Jofi says. “And at the age of eighteen, you were in the middle of it. The Beast Barracks Cadet massacre.”
“I think they ended up calling it the Battle of Beast March,” Sienna corrects. “The first-year cadet column got ambushed. We were unarmed.”
“Your classmate Ennis Reidt, he seems to have been the hero of that day.”
Sienna looks at Jofi. He’s talking like he was there. Like he wouldn’t have crapped down his pants leg at the sound of automatic weapons fire aimed at him.
“He had a sword.”
“And they made him first cadet.”
“They did that,” Sienna agrees. “After the shrinks let him out of the asylum. No offense, doc.”
Jofi smiles. And trembles. His nails glisten dully. And he squirms in pain.
Weird. The way Jofi’s antsing around you’d think someone’s poking needles in his sack.
And then Squirming Needled Nuts goes too far.
“I’m intrigued.” Jofi looks over his glasses. “Cadet Reidt’s recounting of events is like yours. Up to the point you were knocked unconscious. Word for word, in fact. Would you mind talking…?”
And then Jofi’s voice fades. Sienna hears another voice. One that makes a lot more sense.
It speaks to her from a part of her mind too ancient for the mechBrain to understand. It speaks so loudly it cannot be heard by men. Its heartbeat joins hers, hidden to everyone but her, stronger than her own. Its name is five runes long. One letter for each of the elongated scars on her adult body, one letter for each of the slashes she was born with, rent and bleeding. This she memorized before she was born. It is her own living dark recitation. It urges Sienna to
Kill the idiot, kill Jofi now.
It could be done quietly, cleanly. She has the tools, training, and opportunity to get away with a homicide of convenience. No one will even notice Jofi missing until Sienna is well over Khorasani airspace.
That voice, the one that issues from no living thing, tells her the small EMP device she carries can short circuit all the recording devices in the room. In the hall. It pushes images of the body-bag dispenser and the bio-waste hatch opposite this exam pod. Perfect for disposing of a pesky neuroscientist. Her palm tingles, wanting to feel the tough handle of her Bowie knife in it. The one at her hip.
No!
She tells the guardian inside her, her vǫrthr spirit.
I will not.
She fights against its healing spite and delicious venom. Silently, unseen by human or mechBrain, she struggles. The orphan girl born in blood with the birthright of pain and scars, she wins. The coiled thing inside retreats. The heart in Sienna’s chest again resumes its solitary beats. The other remains. And remains itself. Silent.
Jofi continues jabbering, unaware how close he came to being in several eco-friendly disposal bags in Baker Medical’s conveniently placed waste chute. Jane Bowie hangs against Sienna’s thigh, honed sharp and unblemished by blood and gristly bits of clinical neuroscientist.
She has an inkling of a better idea. One not stewed up in the dark places of her brain, far beyond the reach of the mechBrain’s frontal-lobe sensors. One that’s crystalizing in a part of her own psyche she’s been trying to cultivate: the sneaky part. She just about has it.
Jofi drops the bullshit diagnosis she should have seen coming.
“Your case file will have the distinction of being the first where I’m going to overrule the diagnostic apparatus and suspend you from active duty. Because I’m in charge.
“Your birth trauma has left you unbalanced.
“Secondly, you’ve suffered from an unusual upbringing in a non-traditional family setting. No disrespect, of course, to your mothers, but that’s my opinion.
“Thirdly, you were victimized during the Beast March Massacre. And your years at West Point were far from normal.
“Finally, last year’s horrific mission left you mentally and emotionally damaged. You are not fit for duty due to PTSD. I require you undergo further examinations including Likert bipolar scaling, EMDR therap—”
“Enough.”
Sienna can’t listen anymore. Jofi’s mind was made up before she entered the pod. No. Scratch that. Jofi’s mind was made up for him by the faceless ones at the Pentagon who, for whatever petty reasons, despise her and her people. If the neuroscientist had a spine, he would have demanded the number of pieces of silver they pay these days for a squirmy, weak little soul.
“Enough!” She reaches for the knife at her hip.
7
Her thumb flicks open the pommel of Jane Bowie and hits the switch of a small but powerful electromagnetic-pulse device.
The exam pod lights flicker.
Every device with a mechBrain reboots. The holographic display goes dark. Soothing flute music plays as a reassuring message appears.
Reinitializing in
-89 s
Thank you for your patience.
Find out if you qualify for a free hardware update at Eurolincx/licht
“Wha—?”
“Captain Jofi,” Sienna says. “You have eighty-eight seconds to authorize my very important mission. You want to keep your mouth shut and listen up.”
Thankfully, something in Sienna’s tone makes Jofi keep his mouth shut. And listen.
“At first, I couldn’t figure it,” Sienna says. “Your hand tremors, some kind of groin-based discomfort, the weird color of your fingertips. Then it hit me, I’ve seen the symptoms before. On me.
“In Bangkok, after a jungle warfare training exercise, I got a somewhat ill-advised tattoo of a yellow rose hand-tapped onto my shoulder blade. I was too hammered at the time to insist the midget tattoo artist wash up before starting. So to cut a long story short, because we only ha
ve fifty-six seconds left in our brief but memorable time together. The local Thai doc, really more of a combo hairdresser/dentist, he gives me loads of cheap, over-the-counter antibiotics for the infection around the tattoo. Which actually turned out pretty good, once the swelling went down. Fluoroquinolones. The same ones you are taking to secretly treat your venereal disease.”
Jofi sits, shaking quietly.
“My money’s on gonorrhea,” Sienna continues. “And from the looks of you, it’s a pretty tough strain. Nothing you’re gonna knock out with off-the-books meds. No way. But they’re the only thing you can take and hide your infection from your boss and your wife. Both of whom really have a ‘need to know’, especially Mrs. Jofi.
“The bruises on both sides of your ring finger made everything fall into place. It looks like you yanked your wedding band off and then jammed it back on. Regulations state you have to report any serious domestic discord to your CO. Bet you kept that quiet, along with your drippy spout.”
The look on Jofi’s face! This is too much fun. But only twenty-nine seconds left for this guy to do the right thing, for a change.
“Now seeing as we’re friends and all, as well as fellow Army officers, I’ll do you a solid to seal the deal,” Sienna says, winding up. “I’ll get my corpsman Whitebread to hook you up with Acremonium compound, just the thing to give that godawful infection of yours a wuppin’. JSOC med stocks are classified, totally off the books. So, doc, does that sound like something to clap about?”
***
Eleven seconds later, Sienna exits the exam pod. The second light on the mission fob glows green faintly in the brighter lighting of the corridor of Baker Medical. She leans against the wall, asking herself if she really just did that.
Yup, I just flat-out blackmailed my assigned Army shrink. If I’m really cracked, maybe I shouldn’t be leading my people. Maybe I’ll go see Dr. Metcalf, when this is all over.
The Dogs, her team, must be rubbing off on her. Snakelips, Nobu, T-Rex, and Whitebread are basically grown-up versions of the kids in high school who dressed all in black. The ones security guards at the metal detectors would never turn their backs on. Now they’re grown up, and the government has issued them flamethrowers and explosives. And her. As their commanding officer. That’s something they are not going to take away, not with some bought-and-paid for, sorry excuse for a neuroscientist.
Bet Jofi never saw that one comin’. I do enjoy exceeding expectations.
Sienna’s steps feel a little lighter leaving the exam pod than they did walking to it. Blackmail may be wrong, but it sure saves time. She double-checks the clocks. She is nearly twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Down the spotless hallway is an elevator. She hits UP. Roger is waiting.
8
Sienna hits the floor button harder than she has to.
Jofi, you…
A half-second pause makes sure the mini mechBrain controlling the elevator logs her rank tab ID. Then she scans her mission fob. Roger rates the Executive Wing, where they take the president. There are extra layers of security and luxury. Like in fancy Charlotte office buildings, this elevator is high speed/low drag. She barely feels it moving. The passage of floors is marked by a muted chime. Ding.
What a dick.
Sienna can forgive him for his personal attacks. She can overlook his thinly veiled prejudice against Sarge. But she’ll never forgive him for trying to scuttle Sidewinder. And the slimy way he tried to do it, a fake PTSD diagnosis. WTAF!
The medCorps captain was blindly following, if not orders, then unequivocal suggestions. Ones made by people in the Pentagon who just wanted to screw with her and her team.
“How do you feel about your parents?”
What an ass—
Ding
She resents the near miss by her enemies. Still, had the toady Dr. Jofi inadvertently hit on something? This Sidewinder mission, her career, her obsessions, all do relate to her birth parents. The story of how she was adopted is improbable. What came before seems inescapable.
A female military couple took in a wounded Khorasani orphan. A foundling who started life at the edge of the Wandering Desert, one who should have died without ever having been born. Yet, what little she knows of the story of her birth parents—Hamida Qazi and a British boy—is as fantastic as it is tragic. At least the parts of her parents’ story which Sienna learned or guessed over the years. The story of two teenagers, both now dead, which played out more than two decades ago.
Before first term at West Point, Sienna visited Kelley Oliphant Langton’s grave in Scotland. He was just twenty-one years old when he died, younger than Sienna is now. Kelley probably had no idea he was her birth father. It was her birth mother, Hamida Qazi, who really showed brassiness by not lying down in a muddy ditch and quietly bleeding to death.
Instead she crawled, wounded and leaking her heart’s blood, their hearts’ blood, into the sands. Hamida dragged herself over muddy hardpack through the night right up to the gates of UN Base 90-CH. The results were the twisted miracle of Sienna’s birth, and the more or less standard-issue childhood in North Carolina on a special-forces enclave known as the Base.
Ding
She thumbs the mission fob.
One more green light to go. Then it could all end. Asrah’s silent years of horror. Some measure of justice for a teenager who bled and died on the edge of the Wandering Desert without ever seeing the baby girl she gave birth to. Everything can change, I can change everything…
Once Roger inputs his codes, things will move fast. A long-range transport jet waits at Andrews. It will take her and Sarge from DC to the Base. The same plane will take them all from NC to the Gulf of Oman. A HALO-pod jump later and all six of them will be standing on the deck of the CVN 108. The USS Lee. The aircraft carrier she used all her powers of persuasion to enlist in the final battle of a private war. A war she was born fighting. In Khorasan.
Ding
Sienna will return. To Khorasan. For justice. For Hamida. For vengeance’s sake. Hamida Qazi’s silent strife would finally have a voice. Sienna’s answer would be justice tempered with no mercy. The killer would know the futility of his crimes. The murderer will face her and see he had brought pain and suffering, but had also failed. If the Sidewinder mission succeeds, a curse named Asrah Qazi will finally be lifted. And then?
Ding
Doors hiss open. A ceiling-to-floor curtain of reinforced transparent aluminum blocks a fan of wide corridors. One of those layers of POTUS-level security looks at her with suspicion.
“Colonel McKnight, is it?” A thin hospital corpsman studies the pictures of her on his screen. And eyeballs her eagles.
Sienna is getting used to it.
9
During the weapons and explosives scan she’s forced to part with Jane Bowie. Explosive-resistant doors open to spacious corridors. Utility robots keep to the sides. A cleaning bot meets a delivery bot. Optic sensor to optic sensor, they pause. Salutations are exchanged. With a slight whirring, the two mechanoids pirouette. Two metal and plastic ballerinas brush past each other on their way to different stages inside the huge building.
Sienna stands in front of Roger’s room, mindful of her West Point class ring. The ring winds thickly around her finger. It is plenty tough, despite the feathery-lettered engraving spelling out her grad year’s motto. The dark stone flashes dimly under halogens. She doesn’t want to put a ding in the door. Like everything else in Baker’s Executive Wing, the wood looks mighty expensive. Sienna’s just about to knock when the damnedest shouting comes from around the corner.
“Come back here, you coward!”
Huh? Sienna angles her head, and her hair swings to the side. It’s sometimes impractical, but does not impair her hearing. Along with the shouts, she tries to make sense of an ominous, low rumbling. It gets louder, and closer. More shouting. She knows that voice, saturated with
the Carolinas accent of her youth. An ironic smile pulls at her lips. Of all the places and all the people…
“I’ve got ya now!”
“Ennis freaken Reidt.” What the—
A bot runs away from something, its small propulsion unit revs to maximum. With arms folded it comes only to her knees. The ungainly cylinder, painted hospital white, careens around the corner. Small wheels drift-skid across polished floor. Visual and sonic sensors click. After checking for humans and other obstacles, it comes straight at her. Or rather, the cat-flap style hatch in the wall.
The bot is being chased by someone joyfully destructive to enemy humans and mechanoids alike. Curses get drowned out by another sound—the engine percussion of an M1 Abrams main battle tank chugging its favorite beverage, jet fuel. This growling competes with a classic rock song belted out with excessive bass. She can only imagine what he’s riding this time.
“Ennis!” Sienna yells over the rising noise.
Thirty yards away, a pimped-out Hawking wheelchair follows the line of the smaller robot around the corner. Three gurneys could fit end to end across the hall intersection. Good thing, because the heavier pursuer drifts on four—then two—wheels and nearly topples over. Ennis’s one-seater is kept upright by miniaturized suspension suited to a Formula 0 car. Narrowly missing the wall, he continues the hunt.
“I got…”
Crunch
“YOU.”
Spines of a vicious mine plow jut from the front of Ennis’s wheelchair. Inches from safety, the bot gets impaled.
To call Ennis’s chair modified is a big understatement. Its operator can only move his head and right shoulder. His teeth clench a controller stick. A pad of toggles hangs on his chest. Dangling from the chair’s front is a functional replica of the digging teeth battlefield tanks use to clear mines. From its desert camo painted body, at least six stereo speakers point outwards. These look like M18 Claymores antipersonnel mines. On top of each speaker grille is a stencil:
