by Todd McAulty
“Kentucky? He was a long way from home.”
“The Union Syndicate has been scattered across much of the Midwest. There have been a small number of recent engagements, none of which has gone well for them.”
“I thought the war was over.”
“The Union . . . they are religious zealots. The war is not over for them. And I do not think it will be, not for a long time.” His English was excellent, only lightly accented. It was so good, in fact, that it made me wonder why he’d been screaming at us in Spanish this morning.
“Are you evacuating the hotel?”
Perez shook his head. “No. There is no further cause for alarm. Union combat mechs are not like the Thought Machines of the AGRT. They are inferior in many ways. They require human pilots, and human pilots are prone to human error. The Juno pilot this morning had malfunctioning guidance. He was simply . . . lost. We do not expect him to return.”
That lost “inferior” mech and its human pilot had kicked the shit out of the colonel’s top-of-the-line Argentinean robot-piloted machine, but this didn’t seem the best time to point that out. “Is he still in the area?” I asked.
“No. We tracked him far to the south late this morning. He is gone, and we do not expect him to return. I am sorry you were . . . inconvenienced, but let me reassure you. The hotel is quite safe.”
“For how long?”
A frown creased the colonel’s brow. He seemed to realize that he’d lost control of the conversation, and now he was the one answering questions.
But he was a seasoned interrogator. His face smoothed, and he fixed me with a smile. He placed the stylus on the desk and clasped his hands together, looking me straight in the eye.
“We are not here to talk about the hotel, Mr. Simcoe. We are here to discuss you.”
“Maybe we can discuss both,” I said. “I think I can help you with your infrastructure problem. Communications is my business.”
“Perhaps later. Right now, there is the matter of your interference with a sensitive Venezuelan operation. Interference that, I am told, resulted in the death of one of my men.”
I froze. “The death of one of your men?”
The colonel reached for his black tablet. His fingers played over it for four seconds. When he turned it toward me, it showed the face of the dead corporal.
I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I could barely breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe?
The photo on the tablet had been taken outdoors, in bright sunlight, and not that long ago. The corporal had short brown hair and matching brown eyes. His chin was spotted with acne. For a moment, all I saw was Sergei, his arms slick with blood, as he feverishly worked on the corporal’s body before giving up in disgust.
The colonel had asked me something. I managed to tear my eyes away long enough to look up at him.
He was waiting for an answer. It was a struggle to remember what he had said.
He had said, “Are you responsible for the death of Corporal Maldonado?”
My throat felt very tight. I didn’t know how to answer that. Was I responsible for the death of Corporal Maldonado?
I remembered the shooting. I remembered being knocked down, and confused. I remembered finding the corporal lying in the street. He was terrified. He knew he was dying. I couldn’t help him. I should have been able to help him.
“Are you responsible for the death of my officer, Mr. Simcoe?” the colonel asked again.
“Yes,” I said.
The colonel’s face registered surprise, but only for a moment. He lowered the tablet to the table, clasped his hands again. “Please continue,” he said.
“He was helping me,” I said quietly.
“Please speak up, Mr. Simcoe.”
“He was helping me. Me and Martin. We were trying to move people away from the hotel, get them out of the line of fire. Corporal Maldonado came to help us. And he was killed.”
“It was not your responsibility to move people away from the hotel, Mr. Simcoe.”
I nodded wordlessly.
“How was my officer killed?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it happen. A missile . . . Something hit the ground. He took a fragment to the throat.”
Oh, God. My eyes were wet. Jesus. I wasn’t going to start crying in front of this man. I closed my eyes, put a hand in front of my face.
“You didn’t see it happen? But you were with him.”
It took a second to respond. “No. Once we got everyone moving, we were separated. I found him after he was hit. I went to find whoever was screaming.”
“Why?”
I met his gaze again. What kind of goddamn stupid question was that? “Because he was screaming,” I said.
The flash of anger I felt helped. It felt good. I clung to it.
“How could Corporal Maldonado scream with a punctured trachea?” the colonel asked.
“He had his hand at his throat,” I said. “He kept good pressure on the wound. Until he lost consciousness.”
The colonel nodded, accepting that. “You were instructed to move south, by Sergeant Van de Velde,” he said. “You disobeyed her direct orders.”
“Van de Velde. The woman with the rifle?”
“Correct. You disobeyed her orders.”
“You’re damn right I did.”
“Why?”
“Because the corporal was hurt. I went to find him.”
“I assigned my soldiers to evacuate the hotel, and protect you from dangerous terrorists. Yet you disobeyed direct orders, and now one of my men—the men assigned to protect you—is dead.”
“Yes,” I said. I breathed out slowly. “Yes, that’s what happened.”
The colonel stared at me quietly.
“He died helping me,” I said. “Trying to help all of us. I’m very sorry.”
The colonel considered me. After a moment, he pointed at my shirt. “Is that from Corporal Maldonado?”
I looked down. There was a bloody stain on the front of my shirt. There were many stains, but that one was the most obvious.
“No,” I said, feeling self-conscious. I resisted the urge to cover it. “I was helping a Russian medic in the field hospital for a few hours.”
“While you were under arrest.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.”
Perez reached across his desk, picked up a smaller black tablet. He paged through correspondence, highlighted a small note.
“I have here a letter from Specialist Vulka. He says you were of great assistance to him this morning.”
I blinked stupidly. Sergei? How the hell did he have time to send a note to Colonel Perez?
“Do you have medical training?” asked the colonel.
“No. Not really.”
“But you volunteered to assist Vulka. And Maldonado.”
“You don’t need training for what I did. If I’d had medical training, I might have been able to save the corporal’s life.”
“You are American?”
“American? No, I’m Canadian.”
The colonel managed to look surprised again. He reached his hand across the table. “Your travel documents, please.”
I took my passport and travel visa out of the pouch under my shirt, and handed them to him. Perez examined them carefully.
“What is your business in the United States?” he asked.
That wasn’t a simple question. I was here because of Calvin Steiner. I’d made Cal a lot of money installing analog switches—as in actual hand-made telephone switching gear, all wire and moving parts—along a very desolate 1,500 mile stretch of pipeline from Calgary to Minneapolis. It was like he was building these little telecommunications museums, working replicas of 1950s technology, from the days when the only smarts in your phone system came from a switchboard operator named Gladys. But they worked; they were immune to software failure and were 100 percent resistant to network hacks.
Cal likes money. And he remembers who his friends are.
Two mo
nths ago, Cal told me about a software company in Halifax that was being dressed up for sale. A very lucrative sale, from the sound of it. The product was solid, there was virtually no debt, and the owners were anxious to close. But the local management was a little out of their depth, especially when it came to negotiating a fair buyout price.
What they needed (said Cal) was a good-looking front man. A CEO with some experience, just so the buyers were simultaneously reassured and didn’t smell too much blood in the water. Someone who’d done deals on this scale in the past. Someone like, oh-I-dunno, me.
It was a pretty good pitch. But I didn’t want to move back to the East Coast, not even on the Canadian side. Parts of the Eastern Seaboard of the States were no longer under foreign occupation, but on any given day there were still a lot of bullets in the air. I liked it here in Illinois, where the borders weren’t so restless. I’d moved here in the spring of 2082, before the first ceasefire had collapsed. At the time I was renting a house in Galena, practically on the Mississippi, and starting to look at real estate. I turned forty last year, and I was tired of moving every two years. Settling down was starting to look good.
No need to move, Cal told me. You can run the whole thing from Chicago. It’ll take six months at most, and if the sale tops $80 million like they expect it to, there will be a substantial incentive bonus.
At first, Chicago didn’t sound much better to me. After the Memphis Ceasefire the Venezuelans became administrators of Sector Eleven, including Chicago and most of northern Illinois. Per the terms of the ceasefire, the San Cristobal Coalition, whose armies at that point had firm control of the Midwest and much of the Eastern Seaboard, was to be gradually replaced with an international peacekeeping force, the AGRT. For now though, the Venezuelans still occupied most of the city, and there were all kinds of rumors. Paul the Pirate, who covered most aspects of machine culture and who had a special love for wild rumors, had reported several of them: That the crazed lunatic Godfrey, infamous for his weaponized genetic research, had accidentally let some of his creations loose in the city. And that the American Union still hoped to liberate Chicago, and were massing their mech army for another attack.
But there’s a reason people turn to Calvin to close deals. The man knows how to sell. Before long he had me curious to see the ruins of the Thought Museum, and get a look at the big mystery the machines were building in Lake Michigan. Four weeks later, the paperwork was signed and I was packing for Sector Eleven.
My departure was briefly delayed by the January Crisis. While the Sentient Cathedral tried to broker peace, the Union shelled Grant Park. For a few days it looked like Chicago would become the site of a second major battle, as Union forces approached the city in force and the AGRT evacuated civilians across Lake Michigan. But if they’d been counting on the recent bickering between the members of the invading coalition to isolate Venezuela, the Union was sorely disappointed. Argentina and Panama mobilized their northern divisions, and the Union wisely chose not to engage. They melted away to the south, things settled down, and by mid-February I was in the city.
At first, Chicago was very different from what I’d expected. There was still a lot of rubble, and whole blocks downtown were cordoned off, but a few of the big hotels had power. GlobalNet and mobile data traffic were still being interdicted, but some communications had been restored. My hotel had nearly half a dozen dedicated phone lines. You couldn’t talk for long, because the operator would kick you off after ten minutes. But you could do business over the phone again, and I was surprised how good that felt. We were gradually inching back into the twenty-first century.
I wasn’t sure how to summarize all of that for Perez. “I’m here . . . to make money,” I said. “I run a small telecom company called Ghost Impulse.”
That seemed to satisfy him. After a moment, he picked up the second tablet and commenced to ignore me again. He tapped a quick message, and then turned to the side. He seemed to be gazing out the window, reflecting.
Maybe this was another calculated interrogation technique. But at this point, I honestly didn’t give a damn. We sat quietly together for a few minutes.
There was a knock at the door. The ridiculousness of it almost made me laugh out loud.
“Entre,” said the colonel.
Sergeant Van de Velde entered the room. She marched crisply to the left side of the desk, coming to attention with a sharp click of her heels. Perez said something in Spanish, and she relaxed slightly, clasping her hands behind her back.
They had a short conversation in Spanish. The sergeant didn’t look at me—she just stared straight ahead, her gaze level. She was pretty, in a rather severe way. Her blonde hair was cut very short, and she had a scar on her forehead. I guessed her age at around twenty-four, which made her one of the oldest soldiers I’d seen so far.
She didn’t seem happy with the way the conversation was going. Perez had expected this, and a slight smile played around the corners of his mouth. His tone was conversational, inquisitive, and she answered his questions in short, concise sentences.
Then she was looking at me. Glaring, really. I returned her gaze, curious.
They concluded their conversation. “My sergeant has something she would like to share with you,” the colonel said. His voice was mild.
Van de Velde came to attention again. She was staring straight ahead into the room.
“I . . . apologize for threatening you,” she said. “I should not have arrested you for your efforts to help an injured officer.”
I was surprised. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so I didn’t say anything.
“I would like to offer my apologies on behalf of my sergeant, as well,” said the colonel. He was already reaching for one of his tablets again. “She reacted poorly to the death of one of her men. I think it is understandable, yes? An action taken in the heat of battle. But regrettable.”
I found my voice. “Yes, of course.”
“Excellent,” said the colonel. He began tapping on the tablet. “And I think we can agree that Corporal Maldonado behaved heroically. Perhaps that will be some comfort to his family.”
I agreed again. Perez continued tapping, composing a letter on the computer slate while Van de Velde stood stoically at attention by his side. “He saved your life,” he said to me. “He saved many lives.”
“Yes,” I said.
Perez nodded, smiling with grim satisfaction. He finished his note, then dismissed Van de Velde. When she was gone, he stood up.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Simcoe. You are free to go.”
I felt a little numb as I got to my feet. I wasn’t sure how I’d expected this meeting to end, but certainly not with an apology and an easy dismissal.
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
The colonel had already started to turn away, but he turned back toward me. The smile was still fixed on his face, but there was impatience in his eyes.
“There’s a damaged machine with the Manhattan Foreign Service in the field hospital downstairs,” I said. “Nineteen Black Winter. I think you know him?”
The colonel nodded noncommittally, clearly wondering where this was going.
“He’s badly injured,” I said quickly. “A cracked casing. He’s not going to make it unless he receives immediate attention.”
“I’m certain the staff in the field hospital have things under control.”
“They’re doing a great job, yes. But no one is tending to Black Winter, and if he doesn’t get looked at soon—”
The colonel raised his hand. “I’ll send instructions,” he said. “I’ll see he’s given proper care.”
“I appreciate that, very much,” I said, reaching my hand out across the table. The colonel set down his tablet and shook my hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “For dealing with this matter personally. I realize you must be extremely busy, as the head of the Occupation Force.”
The colonel raised an eyebrow. “Head of the Occupation? Ha
rdly. Who told you that?”
I didn’t mean to, but my gaze went automatically to the kid, who’d been standing quietly behind me the entire time.
“Ah,” said the colonel, nodding his understanding. “No, not at all. I’m simply in command of the small garrison here. A humble post—but as you’ve seen, an important one, from time to time.”
“Very much,” I agreed as I walked toward the door. “And you’ll remember my offer? To help you with your communications . . . problem?”
“Certainly.” The colonel flashed a diplomatic smile. “I look forward to discussing it.”
The kid led me out of the colonel’s office, through the door and past the guards, then down the long carpeted hallway to the elevators.
“You are lucky,” the kid confided when the elevator doors closed. “I thought . . .”
“That I was going to be shot?” I said. The kid nodded, managing to look embarrassed.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too. Can you do me a favor?”
The kid immediately looked suspicious. “What?”
“Can you take me back to the field hospital?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
The room was totally different than the madhouse it had been this morning. It almost seemed like a real hospital now, with nurses moving calmly between tables, checking patients. Most of the medical technicians had gone, including Sergei. All the equipment seemed to be operating efficiently.
One thing hadn’t changed, however. Nineteen Black Winter was still crumpled on the floor, exactly where I’d left him. Someone had mopped up the puddle of liquid pooling around him, but had otherwise not bothered to move him. No one had come back for him.
I kneeled down next to him. “Black Winter?”
There was no response. He lay still and unmoving. I pressed my hand to the cracked metal of his torso. It was very hot.
“Black Winter?”
The kid came up behind me. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. But if we don’t help him now, he will be.”
“The colonel said he’d be cared for.”
“We don’t have time to wait. If we don’t get him a replacement core in the next half hour, he’s not going to make it.”
