by R. K. Syrus
“What’s up, Corporal?”
“You are, Sergeant,” Coram mumbles through the swelling, “as soon as we can get you to the destroyer Boston.”
The news that Stahlback left Colonel McKnight to fend for herself in Khorasan did not go over well with the rank and file crew. Especially not with the Marine flying squadron. There are about a thousand jarheads on board, attached to—yet not completely part of—the Lee. Some of them got together with a search-and-rescue element on another vessel and hatched a much better jailbreak than Bryan and the Dogs were capable of.
Seconds later, the five of them brace themselves in front of the wildly swinging maintenance hatch. It’s really close to the waterline. Ocean waves thunder past. Two fast ropes support a small inflatable assault craft. It dangles ten feet above the water. Once they disengage the tethers, they’ll have to veer off fast before the aircraft carrier wash sucks them under. Pretty darn good.
And it got better.
“The SAR unit on the Boston is ready to pick you up and take you to look for your CO,” Coram tells them. “Captain Valcour’s on your side, but she can’t do anything until you’re on her command.”
The zodiac dangled.
Bow spray sent up a fine mist that made Bryan blink. Right. It was a great plan.
He looked at the Marine. So young, so eager to help them even though they barely knew each other and their introduction had been anything but cordial.
He scans over to the destroyer. It’s only a few hundred meters away. Then he checks out the Lee’s Phalanx Gatling gun pod. It hangs off the deck right over them. He closes his eyes. The inside of his lids feel the eerie familiar coolness of his cyber optics.
He steps away from the edge, grabs Coram’s KA-BAR knife. With it, he cuts the zodiac free. It tumbles down, spins on the crest of the bow wave, and gets pulled under.
• • •
She wouldn’t have wanted it any way else, he tells himself.
Minutes later, Bryan is back in his cell, kneeling in the corner. Two Navy guys behind him seem eager to try out their cattle-prod stunners. A third undoes his full-body restraints. His face throbs where his new buddy Corporal Coram lays a good one on him. They’re even.
He can still taste the saltwater that sprayed up through the open hatch. The way off the ship he did not take.
Minutes ago, everyone, especially Snakelips, was eager to fast rope down to the dinghy and bid the Lee an unfond farewell. They waited for the word. He did not give it. Could not give it.
Instead, he looked at the Marine and his buddies who were about to give up their careers and freedom to help them. All to help Sienna get back home, one way or another. This was mutiny by any standards. They’d all be court martialed. All for a fellow soldier, one they had never met.
The 25 mm machine gun had loomed over their escape route. One nod from Captain Stahlback to his master-at-arms, and they and the zodiac would have been pink chum in the Indian Ocean. Maybe Bianchi could delay that order. Everyone else was ready to chance it. The burden of command was all on him. Bryan did the only thing he could. Staring at the open hatch to freedom, he shook his head and thought fast.
After ransacking the prisoners’ effects room and jamming an EEL over the auditory sensors, he arranged for them to break back into jail.
The two swabbie guards in the basketball court were the main problem. Nobu deployed his microSwarm, grabbing two of the dark little fliers as they came out of the module. The half-conscious Navy guards got a good dose of knockout gas and some soothing suggestive words.
Whitebread looked into the sailors’ glazed eyes and said, “All you remember is the prisoners got loose somehow and blindsided you. But Coram the Jarhead saved the day.”
They repeated back:
“Jarhead… saved day…”
“Coram… what a guy.”
Then they passed out.
T-Rex scowled as he pretended to be subdued by the Marine. About that time, the klaxons sounded. The people in the video surveillance room must have woken up. That was the cue for the finishing touch.
“Corporal Coram, don’t tell me you haven’t been itchin’ to—”
The Marine’s more-enthusiastic-than-absolutely-necessary fist smacked him on the jaw. That’s how Stahlback’s guys found them, battered, restrained, and beaten down after a failed escape.
Bryan slumps down on the cot and looks down the row of cells. Sienna’s still out there. He is still the team leader.
I should have led them to a better place than this.
But risking the Dogs’ lives to unfriendly fire from their own Navy and destroying the careers of a dozen people including the captain of the Boston? He couldn’t let it go down like that.
Behind him, loose shackles clink, the door of Bryan’s cell slides shut behind him.
18
“Well, maybe thinkin’ big wasn’t the way,” T-Rex says expounding on the finer points of escaping custody.
Like a Learning Channel lecturer, he raises his eyebrows. Unlike any teacher anywhere, he has shaving creamed them into American Morse code:
“Maybe we should think small. I saw this video once. They were tryin’ to 3-D print a mouse from one printer to another,” Professor Rex explains. “A hose was connecting the two boxes, y’see. One had a real live mouse in it. The other one was empty. Little germ-sized robots started takin’ the mouse apart and puttin’ it together across the room.”
“Then?”
“The tail went okay. But after that, they stopped filmin’. Guess it got messy.”
“I think we should try it,” Whitebread says. “Starting with Rex’s mouth.”
Sarge Bryan is not amused. Maybe they could have gotten away with stealing the helo. With the distraction of a harmless smoke bomb or two below decks, they could have stolen Bullfinch from the flight deck.
Or Nobu should have been able to suss out the lockout system and worked around it. If only he’d had a little more time. But what time? Every second they take is time Sienna does not have.
They’ve been back in their brig kennels an hour after a mouth-wateringly close brush with escape. Jailers haven’t recently threatened them with that quite possibly mythical water hose. The urge to do something other than sit in a cell crawls like a line of electric-charged ants marching up Bryan’s calf muscles.
“You know, this isn’t all bad,” Snakelips puts in. “No one’s shooting at us. We have our own rooms. Whitebread has to bathe daily.”
The specialist grunts at her. He’s become cranky due to his inability to arrange his massive frame on the bunk slat. Bryan can see him in the tiny reflection of the polished lock frame of Ortiz’s cell. Petr can lie on his side to keep his whole torso on it, but his feet still have to rest on the steel toilet-sink combo. He might also be irregular. He makes a note to try to get Whitebread some private crapper time. The man hates doing his business in public.
“Yeah, incarceration has its benefits,” T-Rex allows. “But as much as I do love myself, looovin’ myself’s gettin’ a bit old. The T-Rex needs to roam, y’feel me?”
Doors clang open. A young crewman walks into the cellblock. He is about eighteen years old. Snakelips fixes on his white-clad butt.
“Why go out?” she asks, pressing her body against the bars. “When you can order in?”
The young man stays near the center line, out of reach. The kid’s face looks like he’s visiting a bunch of serial killers.
“You,” Snakelips says. “You know why they call me Snakelips?”
The boy shakes his handsome slack-jawed face. She stares at him hard, as though she is about to squeeze herself through the bars.
“Just drift a little closer,” she says in a husky voice. “You’re about two feet and thirty seconds from finding out.”
The other prisoners get into the act.
“Hooah!” Nobu does his best wolf howl.
“Just look at those tighty whities. VPL all over on this sailor man!”
V
isible underwear lines are just one of the many reasons they are proud not to be Navy.
“Y’all, go easy on the new guy,” T-Rex says. “Just cause a man wears grannie panties don’t make him less of a man. On this boat, anyways.”
Cheeks flushing, the crewman stammers, “I, uh, I’m come, coming, I mean I came, for your sergeant. He’s got a visitor.”
Bryan sits up. What’s up now? Some dumb distraction, courtesy of Stahlback.
“Sarge,” T-Rex says, “if that’s the Red Cross or Worldwide Help, tell ’em I choose waterboarding over this crappy soothing music.”
His bars retract. At the same time, Captain Bobblehead makes a remote threat. As Bryan steps out of his cell, some dang kind of opaque fireproof door seals in the other four cells. Muffled curses and thumping comes from inside them. Bryan gets it. If he tries anything, his people will be left in dark solitary indefinitely.
The distraction turns out to be a welcome one. He does have a visitor. A pint-sized one.
“Apparently she only knows one word in English,” the jailer says. “‘Bryan.’ She won’t stop crying until she sees you. You got five minutes.”
It’s Anis, the girl they rescued from Sidewinder’s Khorasan hideout. She waits attentively. Her nose reaches just over the brightly polished steel tabletop. Before Bryan can employ his three-word local vocabulary, she spouts a tale of adventure and intrigue. In Dari.
As a prop, Anis uses a doll. She had it when he checked on her before their attempted hijacking and rescue op. A first mate had made it out of oilcloth, twine, and life vest stuffing. The doll also has a cape, a scrap of cloth with some numbers on it. Probably measurements of a uniform the ship’s tailor was sewing.
To Bryan it seems more lifelike than the baseball figurines Captain Stahlback displays in his ready room. This doll is more rugged and useful. She serves as the lead actor in Anis’s epic tale.
From what he gathers, the dolly’s name is Lee. Anis’s small hands make the doll move as she tells the story. Lee had some kind of dust-up with other unnamed parties. She had taken a pounding but came back swinging. Anis’s heroine then wandered off somewhere, safe but disoriented or lost.
Bryan looks at the girl. Anis has told him a heartfelt story he will never fully understand. The reflection of his golden eyes are pinpricks of light in her violet-tinted irises. Her casual manner is striking. Most kids are either scared of him or stare. She must have seen some crazy terrible things in her young life. Maybe, by comparison, a big bad albino with electric shining eyes is not so far out.
The crewman returns. He’s given them more than five minutes. “Time’s up. Gotta get her back to her bunk in sick bay.”
Anis does not protest. She merely pushes Miss Lee into Bryan’s large scarred hands.
“Oh, thanks, but we have lots of nice grown-up toys to play with.”
The girl insists. She also pulls out her big guns. She starts to whimper.
“For Pete’s sake, Sergeant, take the darn thing. I swear, she cries louder than a collision klaxon.”
Bryan accepts the gift. Anis cheers up and waves as he leaves.
The Dogs’ cells come out of isolation mode when Bryan returns, holding his caped dolly.
T-Rex takes notice.
“Straight up, Sarge: I think you been inside too long.” Terence’s gold caps flash in the harsh fluorescent light. “Now, truth be told, I dun love me sum dolls. Uh huh. Can’t lie on that. But leastwise mine was life-size! This be like, all awkward and sheeat.”
He’s not allowed to take Miss Lee in.
“Only ship-issued frangibles in cells. Captain’s orders,” the crewman says. “I’ll set her down here, and you can have her back on your way out.”
The jailer balances her on a narrow shelf between cells. Stuffed legs dangle.
Back in his tiny chamber, Bryan again starts to feel old, dumb, and useless. There is a little slat above the door, just enough to fit four fingers. He starts one-handed pull-ups.
I’ll show you old and use—hmpnph-less.
Muscles strain under chalky skin. His skin. Sometimes it looks strange, even to him. Soon, biceps and forearms take on a flushed hue that often catches people off guard. Say “albino” and most people expect an alabaster statue. Capillaries carry blood up to the surface of his pigment-deprived skin, revealing he is in fact made of flesh and bone. Sometimes being made of stone would be easier.
After pull-ups, he says, “How about 1,000 crunches and then see how we feel, huh, Sergeant? Left my Ranger beads at home, but I think I can do a righteous count.”
Man, talking to myself. I hate to agree with Terrence, but I might be going stir—
He sees something that makes him blink. Under his flushed eyelids, his metallic eyes feel like cold contact lenses. He must have been thinking about his meeting with the girl. Replay images flicker in gigapixel resolution. One in particular. Numbers written on the dolly’s cape. In crayon.
RA.645876
Not tailor’s chalk. He switches to live view. There’s another line of numbers, but they face away from him. X-ray vision was not part of his upgrades. Spectrum shifting does nothing. The more he thinks… is it a message?
Intel? Coordinates? To where Sienna is? On a doll?
Bianchi. Has to be. Like Jarhead Coram, like the captain of the Boston, he knows what’s right but can’t openly go against the battle group commander.
The Lee’s XO must have arranged for Anis to bring it disguised as a doodle on her toy. Maybe Bianchi got a translator to tell the girl this was to help someone lost in the desert. That would explain the crazy pantomime story and the girl’s insisting he take the doll. But what does Bianchi think he can do?
Nothing without the other line of coordinates. Knocking the toy off its perch is not the best plan. It might land the wrong way. The guard might take it away. Instead, he decides to make T-Rex grin.
“Rex, that was hella funny. About the doll. Always brings my mood up seeing you flash your grill. Nothin’ warms my heart like your smile,” he says with emphasis.
T-Rex kind of gets it. Hesitantly at first, then as wide as he can, he flashes his gold-tooth grills. All shiny and reflective.
It takes a bit of head movement to get him in the right spot. T-Rex smirks like a maniac. Bryan’s custom made-in-China optics do the rest. They zoom in, enhance, cut, and flip.
RA.645876
IN.578531
After some penmanship under his blanket, Bryan prepares a guided missile made of toilet paper. If anyone can get a message out without arousing suspicion, it’s T-Rex. He has admirable reflexes, too. He catches the wadded paper before it hits his head.
Minutes later, he nods to Bryan and makes to flush the paper. Bryan shakes his head and points to his mouth. T-Rex makes a petulant face as he eats the memo.
Bryan feels electric ants all over now. He has to trust his man’s skills. T-Rex knows what’s at stake. The next in-suite meal provides an excuse.
“Warden!” T-Rex yells. “I know my rights! Under the Cuneiform Code of Military Justice and all that. I wants my phone call! And no listenin’ in! It’s all confidential legal sheeit.”
The brig officer cautions, “Pipe down, Prisoner 3.”
“I wants my PHONE CALL! Otherwise I’ll have UNESCO on your prisoner-abusin’ asses.” T-Rex rattles the transparent bars. “I AIN’T PLAYIN’! Section 815 of Title 10… Are you listenin’? I’m writin’ the JAG a habeas writ on this inhumanely wood-splintery toilet paper…”
T-Rex gets his call.
All Bryan can do now is something he can’t stand: wait.
Minutes tick past. Only minutes. Doubts creep into the edge of his thoughts.
Those Marines, that Navy captain, they knew what they were getting into by helping. He should have gone for it. He should have hazarded it past Stahlback’s Gatling guns. Sienna’s got friends too, political ones who got her colonel rank made permanent, other connections through Roger and his uncle at the Joint Chiefs.
&
nbsp; It was Bryan’s call, and he fears he may have made the wrong one, the worst one of his life, by letting that real chance go. The only real chance to get her back… or at least to know.
Out of line of sight of the others—T-Rex, Nobu, and Snakelips—he slumps his head against the bulkhead of his cell.
Since the moment he watched her fall from the copter, he’d told himself he was going back out of honor, duty, and family. That he was doing it for the team and her mothers’ sakes. When really he was doing it for himself.
He closes his eyes and reboots them. Everything reverses color. His hands strobe, black against a white background.
Without her, he feels he’s fifteen years old again. Fifteen and back in that abandoned chapel by the old Reidt Mine that night the bully Taddy Eddington and his posse chased him. He was a lone, fearful zeru boy kneeling in front of that ghostly crucifix only he could see, wishing that light had never been invented.
Now everything will depend on a man Bryan hasn’t seen since Sienna’s twelfth birthday. Someone he had planned to run into by accident in Europe, yesterday, March 19.
Luminous flux: a term used in photometry to measure the perceived power of light.
In German: Der Lichtstrom.
19
2 DAYS AGO: MARCH 19
LICHTSTROM
BETWEEN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE
DR. LICHT
What outlandish car will that pushy Scotsman arrive in?
Of all the things he could be considering: the cosmic mysteries hinted at by the Ansible, the construction of his elevator into space, this is what weighs on the extraordinary mind of Wolfgang Chrysostomus Licht.
His office is the highest point of his territory. Above the vaulted office ceiling, a lattice spire stabs the sky. Once completed, it will be strong enough and flexible enough to hold a diamond-nanothread leash more than 100,000 kilometers long to reach past geosynchronous orbit, tethering the counterweight. Attached to it will be an orbiting platform, the last stop before the rest of the Solar system. The project could have been done more easily and cheaply with a ground station at the equator, but then what would be the glory in that?