Now that the war with the enemy was over, not every soldier embraced their contracted end. Some ran away and tried to blend in and forget their crimes of violence and prayed to the gods that history would forget them. The government sent Justicars after those ones. But for the more dangerous ones, the soldiers trying to make a statement by blowing up someone or something in protest of the fate they’d signed up for when they enlisted, the government called in Arkadi to negotiate.
This was her sixty-first negotiation with rogue soldiers.
The lorry rolled to a halt. Arkadi popped up over the driver’s cab to see what had stopped them. A massive fissure cut through the road ahead; the searing length of the tear rose halfway up the other side of the rise, opening a weeping wound in the multicolored rock like a knife through a layer cake.
Arkadi jumped out. Her boots sent up a puff of dust. She walked with the driver over to the fissure. A gaggle of military engineers waved at them from the other side. The engineers had deployed a temporary bridge, but it wasn’t big enough for the lorry.
“Far as I go,” the driver said. She was wearing gloves, but she didn’t offer a hand. There were still enemy-seeded contagions going around, so touching wasn’t encouraged.
“I don’t blame you,” Arkadi said.
“Keep your hands clean, you hear?” the driver said. “I don’t want to haul your body out with theirs. I’m coming back for you, and them.”
“Clean as a summer storm,” Arkadi said. She stepped onto the inflatable bridge and stared straight ahead, though her stomach lurched. Neither the driver nor the soldiers needed to see her hesitate, not this close to the site.
The soldier on the other side of the bridge held out a gloved hand to help her, but she did not take it. Soldiers tended to be the most contaminated.
“I’m the situation leader,” the soldier said. “Revlan Te Mossard.”
Arkadi reassessed her. The soldier was a slim, short woman with a shaved head. She wore no mark of rank; the enemy had neatly identified and eliminated the highest ranking officers early on in the age-old conflict that blighted the world every three hundred years. Officers and ground troops groomed and dressed identically now. Ranks were tattooed onto forearms, which could be easily covered.
“Arkadi Te Avalin,” Arkadi said. “You have a vehicle to take us up to the Red Secretary?”
“We have a temporary base set up over the next rise. That’s as close as we can get.”
“They take out the road?”
“No, they fired on us. Missed and hit the road.”
“Casualties?”
“One of my squads and three negotiators. So I hope you’re better than your predecessors.”
“I was supposed to be their backup. Things should have been a lot further along by now.”
“Now you’re on point,” Revlan said.
When a negotiator was called in, it was protocol to have a secondary and tertiary backup to provide relief and help hash out strategies. Arkadi had never been alone on point before. The next closest negotiator was out at an open market negotiating a crisis with another AWOL squad. There would be no help arriving anytime soon. She considered telling Revlan that, but thought better of it. The more confident she played this, the more confident Revlan would be in her, and the more confident Revlan’s troops, the more help she would get. Round and round, the same old game of bluff and hustle.
Revlan led her up over the rise to a shallow valley where a temporary base had been set up to observe the activity half a mile distant at the Red Secretary. They had put up bubble barriers to protect them from assault, and Arkadi noted two contagion sensors blinking in the distance between the camp and the Red Secretary. There were great gouts torn up in the grainy terrain all around them; the soldiers had clearly been trying to blow them up from the Red Secretary, with little success. Dogs barked from a temporary kennel near the medical tent. A big beefy woman fed the dogs tentacle fish heads from a slop bucket. When the woman caught Arkadi looking, she narrowed her eyes at her.
“What are the dogs for?” Arkadi asked Revlan.
“We used them to sniff for explosives,” Revlan said, “just in case they had mined the area. Came back clean, though.”
Inside the command tent were three more soldiers; shaved heads, crisp uniforms, sleeves rolled down over whatever ranks were tattooed on their forearms. The oldest addressed her first. “I’m Maradiv,” he said, “the intelligence officer here.”
“Not so intelligent,” Arkadi said, “if three negotiators are already dead.”
He didn’t blink at that, which told Arkadi precisely what he thought of negotiators. “Is there a communications officer?” Arkadi asked.
“Had to be evac’d. Dysentery,” Revlan said.
“Tactical team?”
“Just below the hill. They can be in place in about three minutes. Two if you can give us a distraction up there that lets us get a closer position.”
“Perimeter?”
“Perimeter’s secure,” Revlan said. She tapped out positions on the map, which puffed up into a misty, three-dimensional version of the terrain. A chill rode Arkadi’s spine at that bit of enemy magic. She didn’t like how much of the enemy’s little trinkets they had gotten comfortable using during the war. It would all have to be destroyed soon, no matter how pretty or useful. “We have snipers at these locations, but the facility has no windows. We can only take them out if they come out.”
“They don’t have hostages, do they?” Arkadi asked.
“No hostages,” Revlan said, “as far as we know, but you should verify that. We want the facility intact or we lose access to the weapon, the Red Secretary itself. Worse, explosives will make the site unstable and likely blow it and us all to the seven hells. There’s a huge methane deposit under the facility. It’s what powers the whole thing.”
“No ways in or out but the front door?”
“There’s an emergency tunnel that comes out three kilometers to the east. We caved it in. They’re sealed in place.”
“How are we dealing with surrounding civilians and media?”
“It’s handled,” Revlan said. “It’s a remote area, and as you saw, they already took out the main road in, which we have covered. There was no homesteading permitted inside the facility fence. But I have drones up doing recon, just in case.”
“I saw a media drone on the way in, shot down.” The drones were all enemy magic, too: whirring, blue gobs of light that flashed in and out of the spaces between things, but they could be disabled. Figuring out how to disable them had been a great boon during the early years of the war.
“Like I said, it’s handled.”
“No communication with the base yet?”
“That’s why you’re here,” she said. “We keep trying all the frequencies, but it’s dead quiet up there.”
“You sure they’re up there?”
“Those guns didn’t shoot themselves.”
“I’m concerned they’ve had almost sixty hours to stew with no contact from us,” Arkadi said.
“Not for lack of trying.”
Arkadi flipped open her notebook again. Her notes were written in shorthand, and her handwriting was so poor it might as well have been in code. “You’re certain it’s this squad, though, Fourteen Yellow Hibiscus?”
Maradiv cleared his throat, clearly eager to sound useful. “All of our intelligence has that squad going AWOL four days ago just outside Sorintov Station,” he said.
“No killing at Sorintov, though,” Arkadi said.
“None,” Maradiv said.
“How friendly are your dogs?” Arkadi said.
Revlan raised her brows. “The ones outside?”
“You have other dogs around?”
Maradiv said, “What do you want to do with them?”
“I want to bring one with me.”
“What, back across the road?” Revlan said.
“No, to the Red Secretary.”
“Combat dogs are ver
y expensive,” Maradiv said.
“So are crisis negotiators. I need your most submissive, well-behaved dog.”
Revlan sighed. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s easier said than done.”
“I’ve said it.”
Revlan said, “Go talk to her, Maradiv.”
“Couldn’t you—”
“Go.”
Maradiv went, and Revlan went after him. The other soldiers in the tent tried to make small talk with Arkadi about the drive up, and she obliged. She could chatter about nothing with the best of them. Arkadi waited a full rotation of the sun before she finally went out to see what the issue was. Revlan was coming up just as she went out.
“One dog,” Revlan said. “I told the dog trainer we’d go in and save the dog first if you both get shot.”
“Fine,” Arkadi said. She followed Revlan out to the kennels and the beefy woman Arkadi assumed was the trainer. The dog standing next to the trainer was a big six-legged senior with a heavy gray muzzle and silver mantle.
“Remember, my hands aren’t clean,” the trainer said. “I have no moral reason not to shoot you if this dog doesn’t come back.”
“Thank you,” Arkadi said. She pulled off her baggy coat and vest and tossed them next to Revlan.
“You have body armor on?” Revlan asked.
“Under the shirt, sure,” Arkadi said, “but best to look as lean and unarmed as possible when I approach.”
“You really are just going to walk out there like the others?” Revlan said. “Are you stupid?”
“Not like the others,” Arkadi said. “I have the dog. Soldiers don’t shoot dogs.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t a dog,” the trainer said.
Arkadi snapped her fingers at the dog. “Follow,” she said.
The dog loped alongside her. She envied his ignorance. She felt the gazes of the soldiers behind her, so she stepped a little bolder, a little faster, until she cleared the top of the rise. She held out her arms, palms facing the Red Secretary.
From the rise she had a clear view of the monument. And, presumably, the soldiers inside had a clear view of her, too. She advanced, calling for the dog to heel. It was big enough that they certainly weren’t going to miss it. As she walked she saw the blasted holes in the dirt from the previous barrage. Great beaked birds took flight from the tangled bits of human carnage left behind. Arkadi made out a torso, a mangled hand, but looked away before she saw the faces. The nightmares were worse when she saw faces. She couldn’t imagine what the soldiers dreamed about, if they still dreamed at all.
The great hulking doors of the Red Secretary grew larger and larger as she approached. She had not realized how massive they were, as if constructed for some great beast or abhorrent giant. She spotted the milky eyes of the surveillance net ringing the compound just above the main door. She addressed those eyes.
“I’m Arkadi Te Avalin,” Arkadi said, already a little impressed to have gotten so far, “the crisis negotiator for Sorintov province. I’m just here to make sure everyone is all right and see if you need anything.”
Her shadowy reflection gazed back at her from the false outer eyes of the compound. The sun was heading back down again, the sixth time it had done it that day. “I’m going to put my arms down now,” she said, because they were trembling hard. Her reflection in those unblinking eyes showed a fearful bird of a woman and her baffling dog companion, but that ridiculous tableau had kept her alive for longer than the others. She relaxed her arms, but kept her palms open.
“Does anyone in there need medical attention?” she asked. “If you’re hurt, I can help.”
She listened to the sound of the wind, and the light huff of her own breathing. The dog sat next to her, its big purple tongue lolling, head cocked. Dust covered her boots and stained her undershirt. She tasted coppery chalk.
The door shimmered. Her stomach twisted; maybe the body armor would hold this close, maybe it wouldn’t. The door went transparent, but all she could see on the other side was darkness.
Then, a voice. “What’s the dog’s name?”
Her first rule in a crisis negotiation was: never lie. Spinning the truth was fine, but one lie, if caught out, could ruin all the trust she had built with a hostage taker. The dog having a name would make it—and, by extension, her—more human and sympathetic to this hostage taker, but she had not thought to ask its name. But she could not lie.
“I’ve been calling him dog,” Arkadi said. “But I know he has some other, fancier name.”
“He’s not yours, then?”
“Could I see your face?” Arkadi said. “I’m happy to answer, but I like to see who I’m talking to.” She pressed her palms toward the door again, fingers splayed. “I’m not armed—”
“I heard you the first time.” Something shifted in the darkness. Arkadi thought she saw the outline of a boot, just a blacker shadow. Was the soldier on point wearing a camouflaged power suit, one of the ones engineered with enemy magic? She had been told those were all taken out of commission at the end of the war.
“I’m here to help,” Arkadi said. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said. The shadow flickered again, and she finally saw a dim form squatting just to the left of the door. The suit was definitely imbued with enemy magic. Interlocked scales reflected the darkness, glimmering only faintly in the light from the open door. Arkadi saw the oily sheen of a contagion blast screen over the doorway. Even with the door open, nothing could get in with that shield still up, except maybe an interrupter weapon, but that would certainly risk a methane explosion. She needed to get him to take down the shield.
“Did you have a dog?” Arkadi asked. “Before the war.” She already knew the answer, because if he hadn’t she wouldn’t be alive right now, but she needed him to engage with her.
“My town got blown up,” he said. “Early on.”
“I’m sorry,” Arkadi said. “My mother died early on, too.”
“I don’t care about your mother.”
“I care about yours,” Arkadi said, and that was true. “Tell me about her. How many mothers did you have?”
The door went opaque again, cutting off her view inside. She gazed up at the milky eyes. “All right,” she said, “I won’t talk about your mothers. I’m a negotiator, not a psychologist. I’m only here to help. What can I do for you? You need food? Medical—”
A high-pitched whine electrified the air. Arkadi crouched low and put her hands on her head. The dog barked and tackled her with its front paws, shielding her from harm as it had no doubt been trained to do for its handler.
Dust clogged Arkadi’s nose. She huffed dirt.
The wailing ceased.
Arkadi tried to heave herself up, but the dog would not relent. She managed to get out a breathy command: “Off!”
He obliged.
“Listen,” Arkadi said, still lying on her belly in the dirt. “Nobody else needs to get hurt. Please don’t do that again. All I would give you is a slap for breaking and entering, if this was up to me. Negotiators understand the risks, you know. It doesn’t have to be any bigger than that. I want to see you all get what you want and walk out of here. But I need to know what you want first.”
The doorway flickered, went transparent. The soldier had moved closer. The suit made the soldier look alien, genderless, which was part of its purpose. The enemy had feared them all far more in these bulky, shimmering suits than in anything else. They feared the suits more than heavy weaponry. Heavy weaponry wasn’t human.
“Don’t lie to me,” the soldier said. Arkadi was uncertain of the soldier’s gender, but about sixty percent of their fighting forces were men, so it was a skinny young man she pictured behind the suit.
“I will never lie to you,” Arkadi said. “You can call up anyone you like and check up on me. Ask about Arkadi Te Avalin.”
“I heard your name the first time.”
“What’s yours?”
Silence.
“Are
you the right person for me to talk to?” Ardkadi said. “I’d like to help however I can.”
“I’m the right person,” he said.
Trying to read someone when you couldn’t see their face, their eyes, the tiny micro-expressions that gave away their intent, was always frustrating. Even their voice was garbled by the suit’s air filters.
“Just hoping to help,” Arkadi said. “I want to make sure I get your story. There are people down there who don’t care how this ends, but I do. I can talk to them.”
“All the weapons need to be destroyed.”
“Like the Red Secretary? It will be decommissioned again. Go back to generating power, that’s all. There are other people who are going to take care of that. You don’t need to.”
“And in three hundred years, when the enemy rises again?” the soldier said. “It will be turned back on. We’ll start this all again.”
“That’s the way the conflict goes, yes. But destroy it and you’ll destroy this whole province. There’s methane under here, did you know that? Not only would you deprive the continent of power, but you’d kill everyone in this province.”
“What does that matter? My end is the same no matter how many die.”
“Is that why you and your friends are out here?” Arkadi asked. “You think there’s no reason to go on? Don’t you want a consecrated death? Doing this . . . There’s no honor in the afterlife if you do this.”
“There’s no honor in any life for what we’ve done,” the soldier said. “They told us our whole lives that violence was an abomination. And then they trained us to be abominations. Where is their reckoning, the reckoning for the state?”
“They will perish, too, in time,” Arkadi said. “Everyone who did violence during this cycle will walk freely into the incinerators.”
“Or get pushed in by Justicars.”
“Would you rather walk or be pushed?” Arkadi said.
A grunt. Something like a laugh, difficult to discern through the respirator. “It’s dumb sending in negotiators to talk to soldiers,” he said. “You’ve done no violence. Your hands are clean. You’ll be here, after, rebuilding this world we saved, so you can destroy it all again in another three hundred years.”
Meet Me in the Future Page 6