“Andria,” I said slowly, reaching for the second drink. “I don’t like what I’m thinking.”
“You going to share?”
“No. Just remember to tell me the torture mods are the key, when I come home with Landon’s guts all over me.”
Andria raised her glass. “To Landon,” she said.
“To Landon.”
41.
The brass was full of ideas. Aren’t they always?
It took another nine months to get the power back up and running. We spent a lot of time guarding power plants and knu nodes and being bored out of our minds.
I managed to get some time with Tanaka during that long dull period while we both got guard duty. Coms were still spotty, but I used the pocket watch anyway.
“Shit gets bad, Tanaka,” I said.
“It’s war.”
“No, listen. People get sick. They die. This whole war takes us out.”
He glanced over at me. With so much of the power out all around us, the stars were visible. We kept pace with each other around the parade ground. I found his presence soothing, still, despite him not listening to me in Canuck about the final solution. The world was moist and loamy; a fine drizzle fell.
“How do we stop it?” he said.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying.”
“Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.”
“Fuck you.” I tried to read his expression, but he was gazing ahead again.
“Why can’t the Light Brigade end this fucking war? What’s the point of all this if nothing changes?”
“I’ve been trying to change it. I told you. They call it the Sick. Everybody gets some Martian virus. Or maybe a corp virus. We think the war is over, but it isn’t.”
“How do we make sure it’s over?”
“I don’t know. Not fight Mars.”
He laughed at that. “Good luck.”
“Well, you tell me the torture modules will help. When the Sick happens and I bounce back, all right?” And don’t be such a fucking asshole, I wanted to add, but didn’t. He didn’t exactly look and sound like somebody who wanted to hear that right now.
“What about my family?” he said.
“What?”
“Did you find out what happened to them?”
“When the fuck would I have time for that?” It probably didn’t come out the best way, but it was a shitty, myopic thing to ask. “Have you been thinking about yourself this whole fucking time?”
“You haven’t? You haven’t been whining about losing your family?”
I wanted to smash his face in. Instead, I picked up my pace and left him behind.
Why did I feel so alone in this bullshit? Why wasn’t there anyone else still alive who could do what I did? Had it driven them all mad because they knew that there wasn’t any way to stop what was coming?
I got myself another notebook, and tried to capture all the days, but they ran through my fingers like vodka. Instead, I used the notebook to come up with a shorthand code to record my thoughts on how to engineer my next drop. Even though the count of days on my bunk was useless now, I knew it would be useful to me later, so I added marks when I could. It was a rough span of days, but I would need to get a sense of the stretch of time involved in all this in order to plan for this moment. What a mindfuck.
Tanaka kept trying to sit down with me at mealtimes; I’m sure he wanted to make up, but I couldn’t stand the idea that all this time he was trying to use me to figure out his own shit. I didn’t blame him, I couldn’t, because I was focused on myself too. He reminded me too much of myself and my own failings. How was I any better, always going back, instead of looking ahead? I turned inward, more than I had at any other time. I ran through the torture modules and kicked Andria’s ass.
It was during one of those extended sessions that I broke my chains and wrapped her in them.
“The fuck!” she said.
“All the claims you make follow a logical path,” I said. “It’s ‘I won’t, I can’t,’ but you have to make it to ‘I will. I will. I do.’ It’s powerful. That’s the power of volition. That’s the power we can tap into when we jump. When we become the light. What directs us, always, is volition.”
“I think we need to stop now, Dietz.”
She was right.
When we came to in our immersion chairs and pulled off our rigs she gazed over at me.
“Life is a grind,” she said. “Your best bet is to find people who will endure it with you.”
I fist-bumped her. “Here’s to endurance.”
She was going to die. I was going to die. Tanaka was going to die.
But until then—we’d live.
• • •
Nine months is a long time to live linearly, that late in the war.
Nine months is a long time to hold on to the people closest to you.
We deployed several times. At first, Andria was upbeat and supportive, looking forward to the next drop. But when we did drop—to clear an abandoned hospital in the dusty streets of Odessa in southern North America, I dropped without incident. That threw her off. I guess I hadn’t told her about the times I was able to go through drops linearly. I hadn’t done it since the beginning of the war. It bothered her. We got drunk over it. We argued over it.
Her and Captain V and the brass started hanging out more. I don’t know what was said. I was never sure how the war was going. All we got were the government-approved news channels and the old, weary media.
“Hey,” I asked Andria one Sunday afternoon, after we got out of quarantine from another linear drop in Turku. “You want to get a drink?”
“Got plans, Dietz,” she said, and she was distant. I recognized the inward-facing look, the same one Tanaka had gotten the last time we talked.
What is it with people’s memories? It has to be in their face constantly before they get it. Before they realize they can’t just look away and expect it to all be fine.
“You still have my back, Andria?”
“Sure, but they have some really great ideas right now. I think they have some tech that could end the war.”
“Like blowing one another up?”
“Nah, not like that. I have to go. Just . . . they . . . maybe we trust Teni, just this one time?”
“You dumb fuck.”
Her face crumpled. “Watch your mouth.”
“Yes, sir.”
People are emotional creatures.
Nobody ever won a war on logic.
It’s why I wasn’t surprised when Captain V called the whole company together, and Andria and the other platoon leaders were there with her, happily lapping up the latest corporate story.
“We need some volunteers,” Captain V said, and I had a good idea of what they needed volunteers for, because I’d already done it. “The brass has discovered a way to end the Martian threat on Earth.”
We needed to destroy them all.
It was the only way to go forward, now that our infrastructure was back up.
The only way to protect our way of life.
The only way to be free.
Mars would never let us be free.
“This is an experimental procedure,” Captain V said, as if anything we’d ever done during deployment wasn’t experimental. “None of you are under orders or obligation to go on this mission. But I can tell you that you will be heroes. You will be part of the hand of light that smites the Martian threat from Earth and casts them back to that red rock. If you don’t want to go on this mission, you step aside.”
I stood in formation with Jones and Marino. Tanaka was two spots up, with Sandoval. Omalas and Deathless stood just in front of me. And the rest of the platoon—all that was left after this bloody parody of a war, this grinding endgame, they stood at attention with me. Next to me. My brothers and sisters. The heroes of the light. The shock troops for the empire.
We weren’t in mandatory training anymore. We were made of tougher, stupider stuff. We had survived this wa
r for one another, and we would end it together.
No one stepped out of line.
I wasn’t going to let them go alone. Because I knew that if this was when I was about to drop to that shining city, I was about to drop out of order for the first time in over nine months. I realized I hadn’t agreed to go on the final solution mission because I thought I could stop anyone. I’d gone because it was my chance to break the loop.
When they took us out to the drop field, I decided this was going to be my last drop, my last real drop. It was time to take control.
I knew what I had to do, now. We had all experienced a different future, the shrink said. It was up to me to make one that broke this cycle.
Sometimes, though, to break the loop . . . you have to go back to the beginning.
All the way back.
I inhaled deeply. Closed my eyes.
We began to vibrate.
I could already smell the coppery sulfur stink of Mars.
First drop.
Let’s do it right this time.
42.
Unstuck in time.
Broken apart.
The smell. That fucking smell.
Go back. Do it again.
It’s the only way forward.
I heaved in a great mouthful of Martian air and squinted at the butterscotch sky. Coughed uncontrollably.
“Dietz? Dietz?”
My eyes filled at the sound of the voice. Her hand touched my shoulder, and I sobbed.
“Fuck, Dietz,” Muñoz said. “You all here? Show me your digits.”
I choked on another sob and brought up my hands. Coms weren’t online, but she had pushed up her visor, and I could see her face. Her real face. I put my hand up, tried to touch her, but she batted my hand away.
“Shit, you’re a wreck,” she said. “Don’t be hysterical.”
Squib stood a little ways distant, patting the pockets of her tactical jacket. “I need a joint.”
Abascal stood over Jawbone as he heaved his guts out. The rest of the platoon was here, the first platoon—Tanaka and Herrera, Vela and Khaw, and there, up on the ridge, the familiar squat form of Captain, no, Lieutenant V. I wanted to bundle them all up into my arms and kiss them.
Instead, I collected myself as best I could and grabbed the front of Muñoz’s helmet and brought her face to mine.
“Jesus, Dietz!”
“What was the future you saw?” I said. “When you jumped wrong? What was the future, Muñoz? Tell me now before coms come online. In mine, there’s a sickness. It gets let loose. Everyone on Earth dies. What was yours? I have to know.”
Her eyes got big. She took my helmeted head in both her hands and said, “You die on a Mars combat mission. You kill a kid on Mars, and Marino kills you. In the end . . . just light, explosions. We bust everything apart. The whole fucking world. Desert. Darkness.”
The flicker of our coms pinged at the corner of my vision. She yanked herself away, stumbling back on her ass.
We stared at each other a long moment, then she was moving.
“Report in, show me your digits!” Muñoz said over the squad channel.
“Jawbone . . . intact.”
“Squib, still not high and really fucking upset about that.”
“Abascal, admiring Dietz’s ass.”
“Dietz,” I said. “All here.”
I felt the first wave of a panic attack. Breathed in and out through my nose. I bet all those futures were dead ends. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be stuck. So how could we unstick ourselves?
Fuck.
I followed after Muñoz, trying to get my bearings.
“Muñoz, I need your squad up on that ridge,” Lieutenant V said over our squad channel.
“Copy that.”
I went after Muñoz, scanning the ridge ahead. What had Tanaka said? An ambush. We were going to be ambushed. All right, what could we do to avoid . . . No.
Don’t go back.
I knew what I had to do, and it clawed at my heart. Muñoz would never forgive me. My squad would never understand.
Muñoz humped up the ridge, and we went after her. I saw the flash of a scope almost immediately. The Martians had scouted out this area ahead of us and planned an ambush for the entire platoon there, between those two ridges.
I took one last look at Muñoz, and then threw myself down the ridge.
I rolled, kicking up incredible amounts of red dust. It got into everything, seeped into my mask.
The squad channel got busy. “Dietz? Dietz?” Muñoz yelling. Lieutenant V shouting.
I came to a stop in the little valley between the ridges. When I looked up, Muñoz and the rest of my squad were coming after me, kicking up great waves of dust. Muñoz again, on the squad channel, calling for backup. “Dietz is down! I’ve got movement on my heads-up. We need—”
I grabbed the pocket watch and turned on the scrambler, obliterating our coms before she could tell them any more.
I turned, saw the flash of a scope, and stood up, hands in the air. My rifle hit the dirt.
The shot took me in the shoulder.
I went down hard.
The breath left my body.
“Dietz!” Muñoz, next to me. Abascal, shooting.
Martians, shooting back.
“Don’t shoot!” I yanked off my helmet. “Don’t shoot!” I raised my hands; my left shoulder burned. “Abascal, put that down!”
“The fuck?” Abascal hesitated though, and that was enough.
“We surrender!” I yelled, and tried it again in English, and hell, Portuguese, too.
“We do not!” Muñoz said, yanking at my arms. I was bleeding out. I could feel it.
“Muñoz,” I said. “This is the only way we break the loop. Listen. Right now. You tell them you’re intelligence. You’re smart. You give them anything they want. I need you to break me out and send me back to Saint Petersburg at the end of the war.”
“Are you insane?”
“Yes,” I said. “Saint Petersburg is the only place I know isn’t going to get hit by the sickness. And the CEO and fucking Norberg will be there. Believe me, Muñoz. I’ve been over this a million times, in what feels like a million lives.”
“How the fuck—”
“You’ll figure it out. You all have information I don’t. Make something up. But get me out. Stay here, after. You’ll be pretty safe on Mars, as long as you stay with the resistance. Don’t come after me.”
“I—”
“Keep those hands up!” A small squad of soldiers dressed in scrappy red armor huffed into the valley. They spoke Spanish, which was a relief. They lobbed smoke grenades between us and our platoon, and a couple of flash-bangs for good measure.
I yanked Muñoz’s hand up next to mine.
“We surrender!” I said again.
The squad moved toward us.
Jawbone threw down his gun. Abascal raised hers, defiant. They shot it out of her hand, taking most of her hand with it. She howled and went down.
“Don’t shoot!” I said again. “We all surrender. Really.”
“Your friend doesn’t seem to think so,” the woman at the front said. She had sand-coated black hair and spoke with a Masukisan accent.
“What day is it?” I said, because it had been so long since I knew the fucking date that I was thirsty for it.
“Tuesday.”
“No. What day? The date, the year?”
“Are you serious?”
“All these fascist zombies are mad as exo-colonists,” said one of her companions.
“It’s July seventeenth, of oh-five.”
“That’s the Martian year?”
“No, the fascist one. You’re a fascist asking for it. Why would I give you a Martian year? It would fuck up your head even more.”
“That’s . . . okay,” I said. I could center myself in time. This was absolutely the Mars recon mission, my first drop. I’d done it. I felt suddenly lightheaded. I was still bleeding. I pressed my hand to my ch
est.
“I take it back,” the woman’s companion said, “you’re too addled to get any more mad.”
“Whole squad’s cracked,” the woman said. “What year do you think this is, private?”
“I’ve seen the spring of oh-nine.”
“Well, well, well. Interesting. How’s the war gone, then?”
“Badly.”
“For you? Good.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very good.”
I jabbed a thumb at Muñoz. “She’s in intelligence,” I said. “She’ll tell you anything you want to know to keep your little Mars resistance away from insurgents. So will I. I know exactly when they will hit your colonies on Earth and here, and how. I can save your people on Nasakan.”
“That remains to be seen,” the woman said, and hit me on the face with the butt of her gun.
I couldn’t blame her.
I had it coming.
Interview #5
SUBJECT #187799
DATE: 28|05|309
TIME: 2100
ROOM: 101
I: This is the fifth session with subject one-eight-seven-seven-nine-nine. Audio only. See intelligence notes for prior briefs. I’m afraid this may be our last meeting, friend.
S: Don’t get all emotional on me.
I: I admit I didn’t expect you to be so mad. Now that you’ve had time to collect yourself, do you want to tell me why you thought you could liberate yourself?
S: You must have taken me seriously, since you took my shoes again.
I: Not my decision. My superiors are cautious. I’m less impressed by your optimism. But it does make me curious. Why are you so relentlessly foolish?
S: I figured out your game. Took a long time. What was left of free Mars was never going to be free if I didn’t play this out. And Mars is the only hope for a free future in this solar system. We gave our lives to the corporations in exchange for clean air, clean food, infrastructure, shit we could have collectively done for ourselves. We forget that people are power. It’s why they work so hard to control us.
I: You talk like a Martian.
S: I spent a lot of this war on Mars. And here. It was a two-fer.
I: I have a theory.
S: Do share.
I: I think you are the agent who committed the Blink.
S: I suppose that’s a good guess. You no longer think I’m a doppelganger?
The Light Brigade Page 30