Burning Eagle

by Navin Weeraratne

  “You’re not fine.”

  “Respectfully Sir, I’m fine. I should go now.”

  “Stay, please. I’d like for you to stay a bit longer. That’s not an order. It’s a request.”

  Jahandar sat back down, and went back to meditating on his glass.

  “You’ve got it harder,” began the Admiral, ”it was easier for people in the past. Everyone died, so it didn’t always come as a surprise. Kids would see adults deal with death, and learn how to from watching them. Entire religions existed, just to make people feel better about dying. They knew how to deal with it. Today, hardly anyone can. Do you practice a religion?”

  Jahandar laughed. Sun Tzu said nothing.

  “You know,” said Jahandar, “what makes me angry – it’s not that she died horribly,” his teeth clenched. “That doesn’t make me angry. I’m angry,” his eyes began to fill at last, “I’m angry because she’s died because of me.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re being unfair on yourself.”

  “Fuck you,” he spat. Then his face softened, “sorry.”

  “It’s alright. But you are being unfair on yourself. She died doing what was important to her, it was her choice to be here.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better? She’s dead and she’s not coming back!”

  “It was always going to happen, Lieutenant. It just happened before you two ever expected it to.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened! I was going to talk her out of it. She’d get older, more tired, put on weight or some shit. She’d be open to it then. What kind of idiot wants to grow old and die? It was a phase. She’d have moved on.”

  He leaned forward and looked right into the Admiral’s eyes.

  “She would have wanted to come back. She would have wanted it. They can’t honor the Do Not Regenerate request, she wouldn’t have wanted it! Just a year or two more, she would have changed her mind! I know my wife, she’d want to live! She’d want to live!”

  Sun Tzu gently peeled Jahandar’s grip from his arm.

  “I know she would. I agree with you Lieutenant. I don’t think anyone would ever truly accept dying. Life is forever: accepting death is just picking suicide by default.”

  “Well, there has to be something I can do. There has to be. Can I contest this in court? I have to overturn the DNR.”

  “I’ve read her DNR. It’s very well written. No court is going to be overturning it any time soon. That why we have DNRs, and why they’re written the way they are.”

  Jahandar’s fists clenched.

  “There has to be a way. There –“

  “There is.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a way.”

  “How?” he grabbed the Admiral’s arm again.

  “As part of standard medical procedure, her nanomedical logs as of the time of death were copied in full. Her neural nets were mapped. She’s not dead, Lieutenant. Essentially, she’s suspended.”

  “Regenerating her would be illegal.”

  “Yes, it would be. So do you want her back or not?”

  “I don’t understand where this is going.” he shook his head slowly, eyebrow raised.

  “Would you let a law stand in the way of getting her back?”

  “Of course not,” The words came easily.

  “Exactly, so let’s bring her back. I can’t recreate her body: people will notice that’s she’s not dead anymore. Instead I’ll have to create her as a pattern in dataspace.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I have to do that. You realize she would have a problem with all this? We would need to move her along in her thinking till she could accept existing as a digital being.”

  “That would be changing her.”

  “We have to change a lot more than that. We can’t have her know that she ever died, that would cause problems. She can’t remember her links with the physical world; her home, her friends, her family. These would all cause problems.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be her!”

  “Look, all I can do is make her immortal and guarantee that she will be happy. If she is exactly the same person, that won’t happen. Now what do you want for her?”

  No hesitation.

  “Life. I want her to live.”

  Sun Tzu nodded, “Good. I’m glad that’s what you want.”

  “You’re really going to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “How ,” his eyes began to fill anew, “how can I ever repay you for this?”

  “The war isn’t over, Lieutenant. It’s only just beginning. I’m going to Paradiso. I want you to come with me.”

  “That’s all?” his eyes were like saucers. “You bring my Farida back, and I will follow you till Heat-Death.”

  “I don’t know what happens after Paradiso. I wouldn’t be so keen to make grand promises, Lieutenant. What if we find they truly are an implacable foe? Until the Invader came along, we thought we were alone out here. I’m very concerned that the only signs of intelligent life we’ve found till now have been ancient, destroyed, ruins. We don’t know their reasons, Lieutenant. But we do know that the Invaders are trying to wipe us out completely.”

  “Their reasons don’t matter to me. I’ll fight. I don’t care for how long, or where I get sent. No one is ever taking her from me again.”

  They sat quietly for a few moments. The bartender turned off all but the house lights, and started to give them both dirty looks. One does not simply throw out war heroes.

  “I’m not the one breaking the law to bring back someone from the dead.”

  “No,” said Sun Tzu. “It’ll be me.”

  “That’s not a problem?”

  Sun Tzu smiled.

  “I am Transcendent, Lieutenant. The only laws I worry about are in Physics.”

  Havelock VI

  “Seriously? Are you fucking with me?”

  “We are to assist with the deportations tomorrow. They say they need all available agents.”

  “Available agents? We’re planning the raid on the Atlantis. We do that, and then all this antimatter panic is over. How the hell are we available agents?”

  “I know it’s stupid. They’re doing six slum ships, all at the same time.”

  “Six? Why not one at a time?”

  “Gives people less time to react and resist. Get the bulk moved now, the rest later. Yuri, these are our marching orders.”

  “Fuck marching orders. Did you take this to the head of department?”

  “Of course I did. They’re sending him out too.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just one day. Just put up, and let’s get it over with.”

  The only thing worse than visiting London, is visiting it again.

  Drones buzzed above the slum city in lazy, prying circles. Mostly media but some were ours: recon units running facial recognition. People were leaning out of the windows of the taller tenements. Laundry reeled in, and shirtless men loitered on roof tops with moonshine. No one was in the streets–the Provost’s office had managed that at least.

  “Sir?” a pair of young blue eyes and a grin missing a tooth, locked behind a riot visor. “Aren’t you two supposed to be working on some big case?”

  The rest of the Special Weapons and Tactics detail turned to stare at us. Big, khaki, ugly men in big, khaki, ugly body armor. Shock batons were clipped by their sides, shields propped against their knees. They sat on benches facing each other in the bulldog.

  My helmet banged against the armored hull as we went over a bump. Through the vision slits I saw padlocked gates and steel-shuttered windows. Grim, black, body armors in gas masks glared as we passed.

  “Oh fuck off,” spat Yuri. He looked as pleased as a medical case study going under the scalpel. Blue eyes looked down.

  “You are correct, Agent,” I said more gently. “We were pulled from that. I think everyone can appreciate that this is a big waste of resources. SWAT’s included.”

  “These London assho
les have everything they need,” Yuri grumbled. “If they didn’t think so, they should never have entered themselves in the lottery.”

  You think we’ll have any trouble Sir?” asked another agent. They were all so young.

  “I really don’t know.”

  Yuri looked up through the open top roof, studying the drones. He scowled.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Look,” he pointed. “Look at what all the media drones are tracking.”

  “Are those ours?” I asked.

  “Heavy assault drones? Fuck no. Those must be London Provost’s Office.”

  “Idiots. What do they expect to do with those, shoot people?”

  Yuri shrugged. “Maybe it’s a good thing we’ve been called in after all.”

  The bulldog passed a heavily guarded checkpoint before arriving at the command center. It was a commandeered, leaky bungalow from before Liberation. We dismounted, khaki uniforms in a sea of local authority black. More armored bulldogs were parked in a neat row. Their diesel engines panted, their water cannon gunners looked bored. Black-armored Provost’s officers were moving about looking busy. Right in the middle of the street were four, huge, grey, monsters.

  “What the hell are those?” I asked.

  “Double-decker prison halftracks,” answered Yuri. “Old pattern. I haven’t seen those since the food riots when I was a kid.” Their windows were plated over, barbed wire was strung along their sides.

  “What the hell? You guys expecting half the city to riot?” I asked a passing man.

  “No, no, those are for the people we’re deporting,” he replied.

  “You’re going to put them in big armored prison wagons, and then drive them out right through the city?”

  He stared at me for a moment.

  “Well, yes,” he went on his way.

  “Check this out,” Yuri beckoned. He was crouching over a puddle. He picked a piece of rubbish out of it and held it up to me. It was a bulb of round and indented plastic, flesh toned.

  “Is that a doll’s head?”

  “Yes. People were living here, families. Why didn’t they just pick a commercial building for the command center?”

  “Sirs?” it was Blue Eyes. They looked large and worried.

  “Yes, Agent?”

  He pointed, “Have you looked at the rooftops? There’s people there. Lots of people.”

  “They look bored,” said Yuri. “What’s your point, kid?”

  “Sir, the only people who ought to be allowed on the rooftops should be snipers with tranq rounds. If there’s trouble, we’ll need them to help control the streets.”

  “Let’s hope there’s no trouble then,” said Yuri.

  “That,” I replied, “seems to be the full extent of their contingency planning.”

  We soon found our contact: a fat, red-faced, man ranked as a captain. He sat at a desk covered in holo-maps, drinking coffee with his lieutenants. They looked us over like we’d walked in carrying blankets of bedbugs.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Captain Francis?”

  “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “Agent Rex Havelock, Human Affairs. We were told to report to you.”

  “Tanaka,” he gestured with his chin at one of the seated lieutenants, “you take these people. Lieutenant Tanaka will put you and your team with the forward units. We need more muscle there: we’re expecting resistance.”

  “Forward units?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that a problem, Agent?”

  “There must have been some misunderstanding in the assignments. We’re counter-terrorism. We’re supposed to be tasked with a Human Affairs drone team, spotting for insurgents.”

  “Well that’s nice Agent. I however am in command on the ground here. As such, I get to make the final call on allocations. In my opinion, having worked this beat for fifteen years, I don’t need counter-terrorism. Now, if you don’t mind, I want you to help with the forward units.”

  “That’s fine,” said Yuri cutting in. “We’ll do that. Can we see the crowd control plan?”

  “Crowd control plan?”

  “Our department head has been asking for that as part of the brief. As far as I know though, no one from Human Affairs has seen it yet.”

  “Well that’s easy to answer. I never sent you a crowd control plan.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Agent, it’ll be fine. You don’t need to see the plans, my men know what they’re doing. Just take your lead from our people and your people will do just fine.”

  “There’s something else,” I added.

  He clenched his fist around his coffee mug. “Yes?”

  “There are no rooftop teams in place. We couldn’t help noticing this.”

  Francis smiled and shook his head. “We don’t need that. It’s Zero Tolerance here in London, people know better than to cause trouble. If they do, we’ll make sure they never forget.”

  Yuri just looked away. We went outside with Tanaka. I made an honest show of nodding and paying attention to his instructions before he left.

  “So what the hell are we doing here?” asked Yuri.

  “There are too many things that can go wrong. The Provost’s men are too inexperienced to know that, and Francis is too stupid to see it. We’re here for politics.”

  “Politics? They pulled us off searching for these damn bombs in the first place, for politics?”

  “The Provost is weak among the Old Ones. All the slum ships that came up in the “lottery,” are its holdings. All of today’s deportees are going to Nautiloid ships. Rushed, large scale deportations, to the most powerful faction in the fleet. It’s a play to increase it’s power.”

  “Why are we helping it?”

  “We owe the Provost. It took in humans that nobody wanted. The slum ships were a card, and it’s playing it now. Its security forces are incompetent, so we’re here to take up the slack.”

  “They’re playing with lives. We could fucking be raiding Atlantis right now.”

  “Human lives Yuri. It’s only human lives they’re playing with.”

  He lit a cigarette and took a drag.

  “Well, if they need us to manage the deportation, why aren’t we in charge?”

  “Politics again. It can’t be made obvious that no one has confidence in the Provosts’ people. Come on. Let’s go find where our drone operators are being kept. If there’s trouble I want to work with our own people. We can’t trust the locals to know what to do.”

  “Alright people,” Tanaka waved circles in the air with a gloved hand, “It’s go time.”

  Riot police began marching in rows, clear shields ready and shock clubs drawn. Behind them the four prison half-tracks began grinding forward.

  “Where are those going?” I asked Tanaka. He was climbing into the front passenger seat of a bulldog.

  “They’re going to the target zone. You can get a lift in one.”

  “Shouldn’t we just pick up the selectees in bulldogs and bring them back?”

  “The selectees are all in one place.”

  “They’ve gathered?”

  “No, we’re just clearing out two city blocks.”

  “Blocks? The lottery was by neighborhood?”

  “This is the lottery. Whoever is there, is coming with us.”

  “Do they know about this?”

  “No. If they knew, they would just scatter. Or worse.”

  “So no one we’re coming for, is in any way prepared? They’re going to be completely shocked?”

  “Look, I don’t have time for this! Neither do you! You and your men can ride in the half-tracks, or you can make your way on foot. Now if you don’t mind, this operation has gone live.”

  He shut the door and his bulldog roared off.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Fuck the half-tracks,” Yuri spat. “Bloody bullet magnets. Let’s go on foot.”

  We set off on foot, leaving the command center barricade
s behind. Curtains lifted and peepholes darkened as we passed. Silhouettes looked down at us from rain-dripping rooftops and decayed balconies.

  By the third street, they found their spirit. First with rubbish and plastic bottles, then rocks and chairs. By the fifth street, a petrol bomb spilled across the top of a half-track.

  “Why are they stopping?” I held my shield up over my head. We all crouched down in a reinforced plastic turtle.

  “They’re not stopping,” said Yuri. “They’re reversing.”

  Sure enough, the massive vehicles began grinding backwards. They escort bulldogs held position. Their turret gunners looked around uneasily and blasted water into angry windows.

  Yuri tapped his headset, “there’s a roadblock ahead, they’re rerouting us.”

  “This is exactly why they should have just used the bulldogs.”

  A blast of light and fire flared up just a few meters from me. Nails and bolts peppering my body.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “You alright?” Yuri.

  Cheering broke out from above us. A group of men stood on the rooftop armed with more bottles. I unclipped a flash-bang and hurled it up at them. They fled howling before it went off.

  We went down two more streets. Then, the half tracks stopped again.

  “Another roadblock,” said Yuri.

  “I don’t like this. Can you ask our drone team to survey the area?”

  He nodded and tapped and pulled out his radio.

  I watched as a bulldog turned around and tore past us. The driver and the navigator seemed to be arguing. The turret gunner kept looking back over his shoulder.

  “They’re getting jumpy Sir,” said Blue Eyes.

  “They aren’t trained for this. They don’t know what’s going on.”

  “The roadblocks are not random,” said Yuri, holding the radio against his chest. “Someone is boxing us in.”

  “Alright, fuck this. Try and get Francis on the line, tell him what’s going on. I don’t think he’ll listen, but we have to try or at the least cover our asses. You two,” I pointed at two of our SWAT troopers, “with me.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Yuri.

  “I’m going to try and save all our lives.”