“We’ve got an update,” she said, bringing me into the dark little room. We stood behind a transparent LED film, giving us a view inside while displaying a generic projection to those in the room. On the other side: the woman in white and her IP techs, Lieutenant V, and the captains from the other two companies. I recognized the major general of the brigade, Major Stakeley; and Colonel Jemison of the Regiment; as well as Lieutenant Colonel Bowman of the battalion.
Andria put her pocket watch on the desk in front of the mirror.
“What’s going on?” I whispered. No idea why I whispered. They all just felt too close, I guess.
“We’re getting briefed. Corporate said it was too sensitive to do over coms.”
“Real information? How are we—”
“Captain V. Whatever you said to her after you came back from that burning Canuck mission, you convinced her we’re fucked. She wants you to take this back with you, whatever they give us, when you drop back. Light Brigade shit.”
I sure hoped I could come up with something witty by then to convince them all this was real. The yawning promise of those nine hundred and some days overwhelmed me again. I didn’t want to keep going. I wanted to end the war here with the rest of them.
“You’ve been briefed on the . . . incident?” asked one of the men dressed in black.
I had a moment of dissonance as the woman in white leaned back in her chair. Was he in charge? Had they hustled him in under cover? Who was he? The face was vaguely familiar.
“We have six divisions in quarantine,” he said. “Colonel Jemison, what’s your status here?”
“Isla Riesco is well isolated.” Jemison was a tall, lanky woman, another one of the ageless COs. I noticed the top brass here still had some meat on their bones. More than we did, anyway. “Or, we were, until you announced yourselves.”
“We’re clean,” he said. “The executive suite and the board are also isolated. I assume the other corps have done the same. Our intel is spotty.”
“This is a bigger deal than your mother let on,” said Jemison.
His mother. The CEO? Not the CEO of Teni. She had no family. The CEO of some other corp. Was this a takeover?
“Yes,” he said. “Captain Norberg?”
The woman in white said, “We suspect that our . . . final solution may have let loose a violent pathogen.”
“Christ,” Jemison muttered.
Another man, the head of the regiment, spoke up. “How violent are we talking about?”
Norberg shrugged. “We’ve seen a hundred percent casualty rate. It’s a lovely little thing, tailored perfectly to act quickly, but not too quickly. While your troops may be quarantined now, they were there on the mission. It’s quite possible you’re already infected.”
“Why are you here then? You have a death wish?”
Norberg laughed.
“Tell them,” the man said.
“We’ve come from Saint Petersburg,” Norberg said. “They’ve synthesized a vaccine. We’d like to inoculate your people.”
“You synthesized a vaccine in less than a week?” Jemison asked.
The man said, “The only safe place in Evecom right now is Saint Petersburg. They’ve barricaded and quarantined the entire city. We had an idea of what was coming.”
“And how did you know that?” Jemison said.
“That’s not important,” he said. “What’s key is having soldiers who can move through this thing before it mutates.”
“How fast is it mutating?” Jemison said.
“It’s killing at an unprecedented rate,” the man said. “It may have already mutated beyond what we can cure with this vaccine. But it may stave off the worst of the symptoms. In tests, it’s improved the survival rate by fifty percent.”
“Fuck me,” said the head of the regiment.
“How many of us are still in play?” Jemison said. “I want the real intel. Not the bullshit.”
“You’re answering to Evecom right now,” the man said. “The merger with Tene-Silvia just went through. We’ll be announcing our rebranding plans shortly.”
“And with Masukisan and NorRus down,” said Jemison, “that leaves us with three corps. And a defeated Mars. If we can survive.”
“Consolidation was always the endgame,” Norberg explained. “Losses were expected.”
“Whose virus is it?” Jemison asked. “Evecom’s? I don’t recognize the son of Evecom’s CEO giving us orders. Not until I hear it from Tene-Silvia’s chief executive of war.”
“War is hell,” Norberg said.
“What do I tell my soldiers?” the head of the regiment asked. “We say you’ve got some wonder drug?”
“You tell them we are protecting them,” the man said. “Just like always. They will line up and get their shots and head back out there. This isn’t over.”
“Mars is defeated,” Jemison reminded him.
“Nobody gives a shit about Mars,” the man said. “Mars is the past. The moon is the past. We’re looking outward. The belt. Jupiter. Pluto. The goddamn Andromeda Galaxy. Our future is bigger than this system and the cold rocks we call neighbors. But we aren’t going to get there unless we’re united.”
“How you expect to get there with a planet full of dead people?” Captain V asked.
All gazes turned to her. Jemison guffawed.
“You can take it up with the chief executive of war,” the man said. “She reports directly to the CEO.”
“Be glad we’re offering a vaccine,” Norberg said. “The Eighty-Second and Seventy-Ninth divisions got sent in to quiet down the riots in Buenos Aires and Bogotá without it. They should all be dead in another seventeen hours.”
“Why aren’t we showing symptoms yet?” Jemison asked.
The man shrugged. “I said we suspected you were exposed. It’s entirely possible you weren’t, or that you were infected with the original strain, which takes longer to present itself. I’m offering you the vaccine.”
I watched the spectacle play out through the film, chewing on my fingernail. I wondered how much of the world was really left out there. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to drop . . . someplace else.
The man stood. “Your choice,”
“Our choice?” Jemison said. “This isn’t a choice.”
“I’m not endorsed by the board yet, I understand,” he said. “I came here to try to help ahead of the merger. So much can get lost in all the red tape. But I saw no need to hold the vaccine until all the paperwork was filed. I have good intentions.”
“You think he’s consolidating power?” Andria asked me. “Getting on our good side so he can use us to overthrow his mom during the mess of the merger?”
“I’m worried she’s already dead,” I said. “I’m worried everything’s dead.” I wanted to ask about the CEO of Teni.
“We fucking murdered ourselves,” Andria said. “They threw us up north and obliterated all those Martian refugees, for what? Some family game these shitheads are playing.”
“We take our orders from the chief executive of war,” Jemison said. “You have her call us up with an order, and we’ll carry it out. You desk jockeys in your pretty little suits think this is all some power grab. These are my soldiers’ lives. I will obey the chain of command. Who the fuck do you think you are, coming in here and feeding us some story, trotting along that little silver knife Norberg with you? You think we don’t know who she is?”
“I counted on you knowing who she is,” he said.
Jemison said, “We still talk about you at the academy, Norberg.”
“My record still stands, then.”
“You beat the torture mods in thirteen seconds,” Jemison said.
“I trained in the real thing.” Norberg waved her hand as if dispelling a particularly annoying fly. “The mods aren’t nearly as effective as the real thing.”
“And you’re here telling me to shoot up my soldiers at this kid’s word?” Major Stakeley said. “I don’t believe either one of
you. I’ve seen too many like you both. Greedy and power hungry, letting others do your dirty work. Thinking you’re too smart for the rest of us. I’m done with this meeting. I’ll await orders from the appropriate channels.”
As he stood, Norberg said, “Have you ever experienced a coup, Major Stakeley?”
“Not in my lifetime,” he said. “I want to keep it that way.”
“But you had to learn about them, of course,” Norberg said. “In officer training. You had to learn about those grand old battles. Tactics and logistics. That part of warcraft always appealed to me. Such things happen slowly . . . and then all at once. The ground must be carefully prepared, often for generations. Corporations had been chipping away at the authority of governments for a century before the Seed Wars. They experimented with company towns, and then outrageous benefits for employees. As health care became more expensive, one didn’t even have to offer private transport and free meals. Simply helping pay the cost to cure grandma’s cancer was enough to ensure blind obedience. That’s how you keep them loyal. Foster distrust in the democratic governments that are actually accountable to them. Show them that only the corporations can save them from themselves. You still see this war as one of bullets and bombs, but the rise and fall of Mars was engineered by intelligence forces like mine. Why did your grunts sign up to fight this war? Because of the moon? Because of the Blink? If you think I can’t engineer a story to make them turn on you the way I fostered a story to get them to throw themselves into war, you’re more delusional than even I assumed.”
“I will wait on word from the CEO,” Major Stakeley said.
“You’ll be waiting a long time,” the man said. “She’s dead. So is Evecom’s CEO. The virus took out most of the executive suite.”
“Who the fuck is in charge, then?” Jemison said.
The man leaned forward. “That is an interesting question, isn’t it?”
“Goddammit,” Stakeley said.
I glanced at Andria. “Can they confirm anything that guy’s saying?”
“No. Media is his, probably, if what he says about the CEO is true. Everything’s dark. There are some back channels. . . . I’ve been hearing rumors from people on the ground, but I don’t know anybody high enough up.”
“They don’t have the staff to monitor us,” I said. “That’s why everyone’s so lax.”
“Been that way awhile.”
“So he could be right, about leadership? That there’s a power upset because of the merger?”
“That’s the shit thing about systems. They get so ingrained . . . they can putter on awhile longer, even when you chop the head off. You don’t know you’re dead until six more steps down the road.”
Norberg stood. I gazed back at her. Remembered how she had stood over my father. “My advice is to take the vaccine,” she said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen to you otherwise.”
“I need to go,” the man said, pushing back his chair. “I have some things to put together in Saint Petersburg. I anticipate your response to my offer. We’ll be at the Taleon Imperial. Norberg?”
She inclined her head. His bodyguards went ahead of him, all dressed like him; same haircuts, his same age. It was a pretty smart ploy, I thought, traveling like that. I wondered how many people wanted him dead.
The whole corp was falling apart. Andria looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I said.
“You think you can fix it?”
“Fix what?”
“I don’t know . . . when you drop again, maybe? If you know this is going to happen, you could prevent us from going, right? The final solution? Then maybe this virus—”
“I’m one person. And how do we know anything that guy said is true?” I still had no idea what his name was. I didn’t keep track of politics; the son of the CEO? I had no idea.
“The captain said—”
“What does the captain know? Our friends are dead. Landon blew apart in my goddamn arms. Blew apart! Prakash . . . shit. I still haven’t lived through the aftermath of that, but I see her every fucking time I close my eyes. And—”
“You think you are the only one with ghosts, Dietz?”
The door opened. I started.
Captain V stood in the threshold, regarding us. “Well?”
“Fuck!” I said. “What did I tell you? Why did you have me listen in on this? I’m nobody. I’m a grunt, and I’m fucking nuts. Just like you said I would be.”
She regarded me quietly. Waited until I was done. Still seething, I stood and saluted her. “Sorry, sir.”
“You have one more drop left in you, Dietz?” she asked.
“No.”
“Me neither. Go line up for your shot.”
“We’re doing it, then? Getting vaccinated? Working for this guy?”
“We’re soldiers without a corp, Dietz,” Captain V said. “Our options are limited.”
• • •
They had us line up outside the medical bay. Follow orders. Take your medicine. I got my injection and went back out into the hall outside the medical bay. From the windows there I watched the drop ships take off. I hoped that was the last I’d ever see of Norberg. But knowing my luck, well . . .
As the ships moved over the jungle, I heard a commotion from down the corridor. The cafeteria. Loud voices. Gunshots. Not our pulse rifle blasts. Those sounded altogether different: a wet punch, not a bang.
I tensed. We didn’t go around the base armed. Our weapons were stowed in lockers between shooting drills and drops.
“What is that?” asked the kid just ahead of me. My heads-up said her name was Tau.
“Not sure.” I shifted my weight so I stood between her and the door into our corridor. Shouts. Boots on linoleum.
The line of soldiers waiting outside the med center for the inoculations started to get antsy.
Tau tried to push past me, to the door.
“Wait,” I said.
“The fuck should I—”
The door burst open. A soldier slammed onto the floor, her head busted in.
I saw Andria coming in behind her, running full tilt.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Get out!” Andria yelled. “Get out! Go drop!” She threw something at me.
Her pocket watch slithered across the floor. I snatched it up. Raised my head.
Figures behind her. A huffing sigh. A wet punch.
She blew apart.
Blood spattered the hallway. I turned, pushing Tau ahead of me, slipping in Andria’s blood, smearing my handprints all over the walls as I wheeled around the bend in the corridor.
A few soldiers stayed on, dumbstruck.
I stuffed the pocket watch into my trousers and came into the cafeteria just as someone on the other side opened fire.
Sandoval ran past me. “What’s—,” I began.
“Major Stakeley is staging a goddamn coup,” Sandoval said, and kept running. He was headed to the rifle lockers.
Shit.
I ran to the barracks, taking a longer route that I hoped would avoid most people. I ducked into a bathroom as a squad of bloody armed soldiers went past. Were they my platoon? No faces I recognized, but that didn’t mean anything. When we had lined up to greet the drop ships, I barely knew anyone.
I crouched and pressed open the door to the barracks just enough to get a look at it. A bunch of soldiers were funneling out through the back door. I recognized Jones, holding it open for them.
“Jones!” I said.
He waved at me. “Get over here!”
I took a quick look around, verifying I couldn’t see anyone with a gun.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Come with me.” Hand out. Blood on his fingers.
“What’s—”
“I’ll take out your tracker. We took out ours. Stakeley’s been planning this since the Dark. We knew it’d give us cover. Take out your heads-up and come with us. My moms will—”
“Your moms
work in intelligence!”
“There’s no Teni anymore. We’ll make something new.”
Screams behind me. His gaze over my shoulder. I stared beyond him, through the open door, across the parade ground, to the woods. I remembered how we had trekked through the forest together with nothing but a map and a compass and live rounds. I wondered if it was him who shot Grandma that day. Wondered if Muñoz’s team shot first. Wondered if any of it mattered at all, after everything we’d been through.
“I can’t, Jones.”
“Why, we—”
“I have to drop again.”
“You’re fucking insane.”
“Yeah.” I hugged him, fast and close. “Go.”
He ran. I watched until he met the rest of the little group; I recognized Leichtner. They had torn down the broken tangle of the perimeter fence. Jones scrambled over and joined them. Sounds of gunfire, inside and out. But he kept moving. Kept moving. Disappeared into the jungle.
It itched between my shoulder blades, the place where I’d gotten my own tracker. They had pulled out one another’s trackers, thrown off their displays, like slaves throwing off their shackles. Is that what we were? No, we had choices. We had pay. No one owned us, not really. Right? Our choices were limited here, though, just as they always were. They hadn’t been inoculated. There had been no time. They were running off into the jungle, but they’d be killed by that virus, the corporate nightmare we’d unleashed. Our fate. Their fate. The fate of this whole stupid world.
When did it start?
It started with the Blink.
“Hands up!”
I lifted my hands. Did not otherwise move.
“Turn.”
I turned.
It was Tanaka. He pointed a pulse rifle at me.
“You with us?” he said.
I wanted to punch him. Scream at him. Because in that moment I had no idea who “us” was.
“I’m here to fight the bad guys,” I said.
“Then you’re with us,” he said, and marched me to the cafeteria with the others.
25.
Tanaka was promoted to platoon leader, which came with another bump in rank.
“You want my old squad, Dietz?” he said. “You’re a corporal. You should be a leader by now.”
The Light Brigade Page 19