The Red

by Linda Nagata

  We watch as a transport helicopter lands on the quad. Our helmets mute its roar, but we have to brace against the blast of its rotors as it sets down in front of us. The side door opens, steps unfold, and twelve men and women, all in civilian clothing, step out: contractors, news writers, and army officials.

  Colonel Kendrick and Major Chen stand ready to greet them. Both are dressed in combat uniforms, but neither is rigged for the field and they don’t wear helmets. They present our human face, shaking hands with our guests and then directing them to stand on the side. Farsights blink with green recording lights and tablets image us: seventeen faceless troops of C -FHEIT’s elite dual LCS.

  I’m focused on my soldiers, not on the visitors, so I only notice him when my overlay pins him with a tag: Elliot Weber. I shift my eyes without turning my head, and see him shaking hands with Colonel Kendrick. Elliot was going to do an article on my rehabilitation. Was he granted a seat on the helicopter just so he could follow up? It seems incredible, and I have an uneasy suspicion he’s heard a rumor of the Red.

  No time to worry about it.

  Colonel Kendrick is wearing an audio loop that hooks him into gen-com. “Start-ex,” he says. “Lieutenant, initiate the operation.”

  “Roger that. Moving out.”

  My dual LCS boards the waiting helicopter without another word spoken. To the observers, we must appear to be a squad of faceless automatons, flawlessly running on an internal program.

  • • • •

  The helicopter lifts off. We’re in the air eleven and a half minutes before we’re dropped off in the Great Dark of Nowhere. I scan the terrain in night vision. It’s flat, like just about everything around here. There’s knee-high dry grass and just a few small, scattered trees. The sky is clear, full of stars, but night vision strips their beauty away. The air smells of exhaust from the helicopter. There’s hardly any wind.

  As the helicopter leaves, a map comes up on my visor. My LCS is pinpointed on the map’s periphery. At its center is our target, which bears the label “Enemy Black Ops Lab,” a short eleven K away. From our initial briefing, I know our target is a mockup of a mobile bioweapons lab, covered with camo netting and nestled in a dry wash near a bluff that stands thirty meters above the surrounding land.

  Kendrick is still at C -FHEIT, but he speaks to us over gen-com, reiterating the mission. “Get there. Eliminate the enemy. Retrieve all data and samples from the lab and get back here in time for breakfast.”

  Breakfast is 0530.

  “What’s the current intel on the enemy, sir?”

  “Defensive manpower estimated between ten and twenty. Standard small arms, shoulder-launched missiles, and RPGs. No tanks in the vicinity, but armored transports are possible.”

  “Drones, sir?”

  “Unknown. But if you see any, take ’em out.”

  “Will do.”

  This is not going to be a live-fire exercise, just a round of intense laser tag, though Kendrick is sure to find some way to shake it up.

  I walk the line one more time, examining my soldiers. We look alike except for height. With the armor, it’s even hard to tell the men from the women, but my visor tags each soldier with a name so I know who’s who. Ten are combat veterans, six are rookies, but every one of them is a highly rated soldier.

  “This is a stealth mission,” I remind them. “We stay quiet until we hit the outlying sensors. Then we move in fast and hard.”

  It bothers me that I have no idea who the enemy is. All I know is that they’re not going to be soldiers from C -FHEIT, because we are it.

  “Listen to your handlers. Know the positions of your LCS, but don’t succumb to tunnel vision. Be aware at all times of what’s going on around you.” I turn to Jaynie. “Sergeant Vasquez? Move us out.”

  “Single line!” Jaynie snaps. “Form up!”

  Jaynie’s on point. The LCS falls into place behind her. We’ll be going single file to reduce our profile. I take a position three back while Sergeant Nolan sweeps.

  We move out at a fast clip, loping through the dry grass, the powered legs of the dead sisters letting us run better-than-eight-minute miles without trying too hard, while carrying the weight of our packs, our armor, and our arms. The angel is ahead of us, flying high to make it safe from ground-based fire.

  We’ve put eight klicks behind us, and the grass is giving way to more frequent groves of small, thorny trees, when Pagan checks in.

  “Shelley.”

  “Here.”

  “We’ve got EM signals indicating sensor positions. Uploading to your map now.”

  Pale dots blossom in a ring around our target, but the data gets to us too late. We’ve already passed through the outer ring. I shunt the data to Jaynie. “They know we’re coming,” I warn her, panting as I run.

  “Got it, sir.”

  I switch back to Pagan. “Any sign . . . of an enemy drone?”

  “Not so f—”

  A flash lights up the sky, and in midsentence I lose Pagan, along with the feed from the angel. A concussion follows, rolling across the land: the sound of the simulated rocket that took the angel away.

  “Angel down,” I inform the company. Without the angel, none of us can reach Guidance, but we can still link to one another by helmet-to-helmet transmission. It’s just like that time at Dassari, when the Red denied outside links to my LCS, except tonight, I’m sure it’s Kendrick who’s deprived us of the angel. If he thinks it’s going to shake me up, he’s wrong.

  “Hold up!” I call over gen-com.

  As the line halts, I shunt the sensor map to everyone. “We’re inside the periphery and they already know we’re coming. There’s a mob of inner alarms we need to get through, but don’t sweat it too much. We go in hot, move fast. They’ll pick up where we were, but they won’t know where we are.”

  I earn a determined chorus of Yes, sir!

  “I want radio silence. If we haven’t got angel eyes, there’s no point in advertising our positions on the EM spectrum. So stay offline. Only exception: if you’re isolated and need help. We will be passively receiving. Team leaders, manually collect your personnel.”

  Teams of four have been preassigned. Team leaders are my two sergeants plus Specialist Vanessa Harvey, a veteran of Bolivia, and Specialist Matt Ransom. Two rookies go with each sergeant, and one each with the other teams, giving them all a good chance of surviving the night.

  Harvey and Ransom disappear with their teams in opposite directions, circling around the target. They’ll try to get up on the bluff and come in from the back. Jaynie and Nolan spread out with their teammates to take the close approaches. I move between them, my M-CL1a in hand. We go fast, using night vision to keep a close eye on the ground for signs of land mines, or trip wires strung between the trees.

  Two kilometers out from the lab we encounter the enemy. My visor picks up motion dead ahead. It’s subtle, so the display emphasizes it to draw my eye: a rod, seen for a moment past a screen of branches. Instinct tells me it’s a rifle barrel but I don’t really care. The visor supplies targeting. I just aim and fire.

  My helmet mutes the sound and my visor suppresses the muzzle flash. I’m able to see a body snap back and collide with the ground. I pull back in surprise. I’m shooting stinging rounds, not bullets. No way was there enough force to knock someone back that hard. It’s got to be an effect of the kill box, but not one I’ve seen before.

  I dart forward between the trees and find the body. The soldier is on his back, his legs locked straight in his disabled dead sister, his arms locked at his sides, and his visor clear—powered down—indicating he’s officially dead. I get a good look at his face. I don’t know him, but he’s gazing up at me with a deep, glittering irritation that makes me grin. He can’t hold it against me, though, because with his night vision gone all he can see of me is a shadow among shadows. His arms are l
ocked down by the exoskeleton, but his hands are free to express his opinion of the night and he gives me the finger.

  Fuck you too, brother.

  Maybe it’s not resentment, though. Could be he just knows what’s coming.

  “Drop!” Jaynie shouts from somewhere to my left.

  I do it. A missile howls from her position, snaking through the trees. It’s a toy compared to the real thing, but I press my visor against the ground as it goes off with a flash-bang burst. Then I launch myself, using the combined power of the dead sister’s four limbs.

  I almost overdo it. I have to twist in the air and strike with my right arm strut against a tree trunk to keep from smashing into it. But when I hit the ground, running all out, machine-gun fire that was no doubt meant for me is glittering in useless tracers several steps behind.

  I leave the shooter to Jaynie. In a few more strides I’m at the edge of the trees. Rising before me against the white-on-dark-green of a star field seen in night vision is a low, steep-sided bluff. A firefight is under way on the slope. Tracers scratch out horizontal lines as figures duck and rise beneath minimal cover. While the enemy is distracted, I go for the lab.

  The dry wash where it’s hidden opens below me. The lab is a cargo container draped in camo netting, riding on a trailer with fat desert tires. I drop a grenade into the wash and hit the ground as the flash-bang lights up the sky. Then I jump sideways to avoid the weapons fire I know is going to come from the slope.

  A burst of tracers beelines toward where I was. I scramble for the wash, moving just ahead of a second burst. Then the battle on the slope heats up. It’s fierce enough to steal away the attention of my assailants, or maybe to kill them, who knows, but for a few seconds no one is shooting at me.

  I peer into the wash. Two figures lie facedown in the sand, just outside the lab. I aim and fire, putting rounds into both of them to make sure the battle AI locks up their dead sisters for the duration. Then I drop into the wash.

  Hanging steel steps lead up to the lab door. I place a grenade on the top step, then jump back up to the rim of the wash. It’s three meters, but with the dead sister I reach the lip in one go, rolling out over the top as the grenade pops.

  Two more grenades go off on the bluff, and then there’s only silence.

  I stay flat on the ground as two figures cautiously emerge from the woods. My visor uses height and posture to ID them as Jaynie and one of our rookies, PFC Julio Hoang.

  “Shelley, you there?” Jaynie asks, off-com.

  My helmet picks up and amplifies her words so I can hear her.

  “I’m here. Don’t kill me.”

  I get my feet under me, and crouched low, I scramble the few steps to the edge of the wash and look down. The grenades we’re using are mostly light and noise, but the door to the shipping container has been rigged to pop at the concussion.

  “Lab’s open. Let’s go.”

  Inside we find glass phials neatly sorted into padded and armored boxes. I put Hoang to work dividing these between our three packs, while Jaynie and I search for the computational equipment. We find three tablets. We take one each—everything’s divided between us so we’ll have something for Intelligence, even if only one of us gets through—and then we get out.

  Jaynie and Hoang scramble out of the wash; I follow. Then I break radio silence. “Initiate ping.” The order goes out over gen-com. Each helmet responds automatically, sending position info. I fix my gaze on the icon for the LCS map and it expands. Ransom, Flynn, Specialist Samuel Tuttle, and Specialist Jayden Moon register as still alive on the side of the bluff. The two rookies who were on their teams register as dead, while Harvey and PFC Layla Wade don’t show up at all—which means the battle AI deems them blown up, with their equipment so badly damaged it can’t check in.

  “Ransom! Remaining enemy?”

  “Bluff’s clear, sir!”

  Behind me in the woods, I register Sergeant Nolan, his two rookies, and Specialist Fernandez, who designates as injured.

  “Nolan?”

  “Still at least two in the trees.”

  “Shoot anything not us.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Lab and gully are clear. Ransom, make sure transponders go on our bodies, then come down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Swinging my backpack off my shoulder, I take out the loot from the lab and pass it to Jaynie. “Take Hoang, and grab one of Nolan’s rookies. Go south around the trees. Once you’re clear of the battle zone, run hard for home. We’ll be coming behind you.”

  “See you there, sir.”

  They take off. A figure darts out of the trees to join them, while Ransom leads our surviving soldiers down from the bluff.

  When everyone has cleared the wash I tell Ransom and Tuttle to blow up what’s left of the lab. It’s just playacting, but they have fun with it anyway.

  Then we spread out to hunt the remaining defenders.

  Nolan directs us into the woods. He thinks he knows where the two survivors are hidden, but as we get closer to the suspected position, I know he’s wrong.

  We’re in a loose line with a ten-foot interval. Ransom’s on my right; Jayden Moon is on my left. Ahead of me there’s a tumbledown tree. Its gnarled trunk lies on the ground, but its roots must still have a grip on the sandy soil, because its leaves are green. God whispers the news to me: That’s where the enemy is waiting, a fact we’re about to discover the hard way.

  “Drop!” I shout.

  Moon hesitates, but Ransom knows me. He doesn’t need to be told twice. We hit the ground as the blinding muzzle flash of automatic-weapons fire blazes behind the branches of the tumbledown tree. I return fire, but Ransom takes a more serious approach.

  “Fire in the hole!” he bellows. I press my visor against the ground as a flash-bang goes off. The concussion is muffled by my helmet, but for a heartbeat my fingers and the hooks on my arm struts claw at the ground as I’m transported back to Fort Dassari—but in another beat of my heart the skullnet washes my terror away.

  “Moon?” I query over gen-com.

  No answer. I’m pretty sure he’s dead.

  “Nolan?”

  He answers on gen-com. “Sorry about that, sir.”

  “Status?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Ransom?”

  “Golden, sir!”

  Everyone else checks in.

  I get up and go count the enemy bodies. “Two confirmed. Nolan, is that all?”

  “It’s all I know of.”

  “Game’s over,” Ransom says. “We win.”

  I put a transponder on Moon’s body. He glares up at me, just like my dead enemy did, but he’s got nothing to complain about. “Next time I tell you to drop, do it.”

  His gaze shifts away. He probably wants to give me the finger too, but Moon’s too smart for that.

  The angel comes back online, relaying Kendrick’s voice to all the soldiers on both sides of the game. “Make your weapons safe and let the dead rise,” he declares with a dramatic flair that impresses no one. “I declare peace among you. Embrace your enemy as you would a beloved sibling.”

  Moon stirs, and so do the two unknowns who were caught by Ransom’s flash-bang.

  “Make your weapons safe,” I remind them.

  Moon gets to his feet. “Lieutenant, how the hell did you know we were about to flame out?”

  An excellent question, one I want Kendrick to answer. “Colonel? Did we have another security lapse?”

  “Goddamn King David,” Kendrick answers.

  We all look east toward the low thrum of an approaching helicopter.

  Kendrick says, “Mark out an LZ, Shelley. C -FHEIT LCS is getting pulled out first. We’ve got issues to discuss.”

  • • • •

  It takes the helicopter only a few minutes
to ferry us back to C -FHEIT, but during those minutes there’s nothing to do but think about what happened—and as I think about it, anger kicks in. I agreed to the skullnet. I’m wired for emotions. It’s part of the job and I’m not complaining, but Guidance has a duty to protect me from outside inter­ference and they failed to do it. Again.

  It pisses me off.

  There’s a red stain bleeding through their defenses, and it’s infecting me. So far the Red has been on my side, but no one knows why, and there’s no reason to believe it will always be that way.

  Sometimes, the Devil raises us up, only to throw us down from a greater height.

  Thelma Sheridan is crazy, no question, but that doesn’t mean she’s stupid. One of these days, when it suits the Red’s agenda, I might find myself pushed into panic when only a reasoned calm could save my life and the lives of the people around me. Then I’m not David anymore, I’m Saul—rejected by God and dead with my soldiers on the battlefield.

  We set down on the quad, and as soon as the door is open, I’m out. “Kendrick!”

  He opens a solo link to my helmet. “Debriefing. Now. Room one ten.”

  Still rigged in my dead sister and with my HITR in hand, I stomp over to the Cyber Center. From the open door of the largest conference room, I hear the chatter of the gathered observers, but Colonel Kendrick is closeted in a smaller room. I open the door to 110 and find him sitting at an oval table, his back to the door. He’s not quite alone. Two tablets are set up on the table. A one-star general I don’t recognize looks out of one; a civilian gazes out of the other.

  The civilian is a soft and pudgy twentysomething, with dark, Middle Eastern eyes, dark hair, and a five o’clock shadow. “Hey, Shelley,” he says. The voice confirms what I already suspected: This is Pagan.

  “It came,” I tell him. “It hacked my head just like at Dassari. Your new security didn’t work.”

  Pagan winces, but it’s the general in the tablet who answers. “We are aware of that, Lieutenant Shelley. It’s priority one to find out why.”