The Red

by Linda Nagata

  We wait for full dark, hoping for cloud cover, but all we get is the usual smog layer rolling up from the gulf.

  I’m rigged in my dead sister, helmet on and a full pack on my back with food, water, ordnance, and a med kit. Frag, flash-bang, and smoke grenades nest in my vest pockets, and I’m carrying my M-CL1a with its underslung barrel for programmable grenades.

  There are eighteen of us: the sixteen enlisted of C -FHEIT’s dual LCS, along with me and Colonel Kendrick.

  As we wait together for the order to move out, Jaynie opens a solo link between our helmets.

  “Lieutenant Shelley?”

  “What’s up?”

  “You were wrong, sir.”

  I feel like a kid guilty of any of a number of transgressions and with no idea which one I’m being called on. “It’s not uncommon,” I confess. “So hit me. What exactly?”

  “At Dassari you told me a story. You said a DC will never allow a war in their own country. Well fuck, sir, if what Colonel Kendrick told us is true, Vanda-Sheridan just engineered a fucking war in their own country. In our country.”

  “Huh. Guess I did call that one wrong.”

  She pushes a little harder. “You remember rule one? ‘Don’t kill off your taxpayers.’”

  “You have a damn good memory, Jaynie. I guess I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

  “You weren’t all wrong, sir. You said at Dassari there was nothing at stake, and that was true. But it’s different now. This is a real war, and there’s a lot more on the table than the fortunes of a few dragons. I just want you to know, I’ve got your back.”

  “Shit, Jaynie, you’re scaring me.”

  “It’s good to be scared, Shelley. It’s healthy.”

  I smile to myself. “Then I’ve never been better. Let’s look after each other, okay? And everyone else.”

  “You got it.”

  Kendrick breaks in on gen-com. I wonder if he’s been listening in, but all he says is, “You’ve got your go-ahead, Shelley. See you on the other side.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hoo-yah!” Ransom yells, the volume automatically dampened by my helmet.

  The entire unit responds, “Hoo-yah!”

  And I take off, because it’s my assignment to go first.

  Powered by my dead sister, I leave the grounds at an easy lope, angling to the northeast. A map projected on my visor shows the tiny, glowing point of my existence as it separates with excruciating slowness from the mother-ship gleam of C -FHEIT. Somewhere above me an angel is watching.

  The air is still, the night ethereal in its silence. I’m the loudest thing around, crackling through the dry grass in a thudding rhythm complemented by my breathing. The moon hasn’t risen yet. Behind the night’s thin smoke veil stars gleam in multitudes. Satellites move among them, but no planes fly over Texas tonight.

  My overlay tallies the passing seconds. It takes me three minutes and forty-five seconds to cover the first kilo­meter. That’s when I see a second glowing point depart from the mother ship: Ransom, leaving on a slightly different heading. The rest will set out over the next hour, two to three minutes apart. Scattered across time and miles, we’ll be harder to detect. So goes the theory.

  A coyote howls somewhere to the west. I resist the urge to run faster. Our initial goal is to get out into the countryside unnoticed. We don’t even know where we’re going yet.

  • • • •

  It’s twenty-four kilometers to the perimeter fence. I make it in less than two hours—and my feet aren’t even sore. I am aware of fatigue setting in, but the skullnet keeps it at a distance.

  I stop beside the fence long enough to drink water and to survey the map, tallying every point in the scattered constellation of our dual LCS. If anyone gets in trouble, if their equipment breaks down or they become sick or injured, Kendrick’s order is to leave them behind. I don’t like it. No one does. Still, I’m guessing the Texas Independence Army is a long way from imposing their authority on the hinter­lands, and that out here an injured soldier has more to fear from coyotes than from Vanda-Sheridan’s treasonous militia.

  I hope so anyway.

  Turning back to the fence, I extend the arm hooks of the dead sister and then jump. Using the hooks to catch the top rail of the fence, I lock on. I’m hanging there, but I don’t feel my weight because I’m standing on the dead sister’s footplates. At the top of the fence three strands of barbed wire strung on angled braces separate me from the other side. I clip them one by one, ducking to dodge the backlash. Then I use the arm hooks to haul myself far enough up to get a knee over the top. On the ground again, I resume my lope to the northeast.

  Not long after, I reach a state highway. I lie low for several seconds, listening for traffic. When I don’t hear any, I vault a barbed-wire fence, bound across the road, and vault another fence. The waning moon looks old and worn as it looms over the eastern horizon. Its yellow light picks out the boxy shape of a ranch house eight hundred meters down the road. I hear a dog bark, but it doesn’t sound too sure of itself.

  I keep going.

  At 0100, my map updates. I’m not linked to Guidance, so I assume Kendrick has pushed new orders through. I’m to bear east and south, where I’ll intersect a county road 13.2 kilometers away. Bivouac, it says. Wait for transportation.

  Hallelujah. We won’t have to run all the way to wherever it is we’re going.

  Because Texas is, after all, one hell of a big state.

  • • • •

  One hell of a big state, with a lot of military, both veterans and active duty.

  By the time our LCS has reunited on the roadside, Guidance has somehow hooked up with a local kid who is home on leave after a year in the Sahel. They give him a field promotion to specialist and tell him that he is now operating behind enemy lines, without a uniform. He thinks it’s cool.

  He takes his dad’s eighteen-wheel cattle truck, does a few experimental slaloms on the narrow road, and gets the wheels to slide sideways, leaving a beautiful skid mark that ends just short of a ditch while bringing the cab to rest on the opposite shoulder. That’s something we don’t learn in New York City.

  A team of four from our LCS hurries to get one of the back tires unbolted. They settle it at an angle on the axle so it looks like the axle is bent. That’s all the subterfuge we can manage before Kendrick barks at us to scatter.

  I take off along the road, sprinting hard to my assigned position, eight hundred meters out. Powered by the dead sister, I make it in three minutes, but my organic parts do not approve. I’m shaking as I throw myself on the ground in the shadow of a thin, scrubby bush. My breath is whooshing so hard that for a few seconds my visor’s ventilation system can’t keep up.

  Several pairs of running footsteps pound down the road in my wake, but one by one they fall silent before reaching me. Only one runner comes all the way. I check the map on my visor and confirm that it’s Ransom. Brush crackles as the bright point marking his existence departs the road, opposite me. The rest of the dual LCS is spread out all the way back to the disabled cattle truck.

  I am so tired I’m not entirely sure I’m going to be able to get up again. The organics hurt, and my nerves are so raw that the feedback from the prosthetics is about to cripple me. Switching from the visor to my overlay, I pull up the neural feedback bar that Joby installed, and I slide it down.

  As the pain eases, I hear in the distance the low rumbling of an approaching truck. Though I knew it was coming, I’m startled anyway and I scramble for the pistol Kendrick gave me to use. It feels small and useless in my hand, but I’m careful with it anyway, keeping it out of the dirt.

  A green light pulses three times in my visor, announcing a direct link to Guidance.

  “Hold position,” Delphi breathes in my ears.

  “Roger that,” I whisper. “Is Guid
ance hooked in everywhere?”

  “Affirmative. Everyone’s got a good spirit.”

  My lips shape a silent Thank you, which my skullnet picks up and sends.

  Guidance exists to help us avoid fatal mistakes—and tonight, with six rookies and everyone light-headed from exhaustion, we need all the help we can get, because if there are any errors in this mission, Boston might get blown up.

  I don’t actually know that there’s a bomb in Boston. I’m just pretending there is, because in my heart I know the first target of the secessionists is going to be Manhattan, that it has to be Manhattan. Symbols are powerful things, and the city of New York symbolizes unity, diversity, past, future . . . and a big middle finger flipped at terrorists like the Texas Independence Army.

  The red veins of the skullnet icon flicker, drawing my focus back to the present and to the growing rumble of the approaching truck. It’s a container truck belonging to the Texas National Guard. Intelligence has been tracking it ever since it was stolen at gunpoint by a turncoat guardsman loyal to the TIA. It’s transporting artillery, which is interesting though not relevant, since none of us has ever trained in artillery. We don’t want the truck for its weaponry. We want it because it’s a TIA asset. If we can quietly steal it back, we should be able to ride it a couple hundred miles east without the TIA’s even noticing that anything’s gone wrong.

  My breathing slows, and my heartbeat settles into a deep, background thud. There’s no way to know how close the truck will get to our fake accident scene before it stops. If the driver is the suspicious type, he might try to turn around as soon as he sees something is wrong. But this is a narrow county road with soft shoulders. Turning around in a big rig might not be possible—and it’s my job to make sure the driver doesn’t have time to try.

  Sound carries remarkably across the flat landscape. Minutes pass as the truck draws near. As I lie on my belly, flat against the ground, I think about Texas scorpions. I imagine them crawling all around me. Or tarantulas.

  “Ready,” Delphi says.

  At the angle my head is turned I can just see the glow of the truck’s headlights rising above the brush.

  I switch to angel sight, so I’m looking down from the drone’s position as it cruises slowly above the road. I watch the oncoming truck pass beneath it. The staged wreck of the cattle truck is visible in the distance, the beams of its headlights shooting past a barbed-wire fence into an empty cattle range. Amber lights outline the cab. The kid is crouched beside the “broken” wheel, but as the headlights of the guard truck touch him, his skinny figure straightens and he turns, moving his hand up and down to signal to the oncoming truck to slow down.

  Brake lights on the stolen guard truck blaze in brilliant red, and then the gunning throb of air brakes washes over me. “Betcha he was half-asleep,” I whisper to Delphi.

  She’s too professional to answer.

  The air brakes stop. The truck rolls past me at not more than fifteen miles per hour. Then it stops. It sits there for most of a minute, the engine rumbling. Diesel fumes envelop me.

  The kid starts walking toward the truck. The headlights show him dressed in a thin T-shirt and tight jeans. Anyone can see there’s no weapon on him. He’s not a threat.

  Still, there’s no sign of any activity in the cab. Unless the driver has a satellite phone—not very likely—he’s on his own trying to figure out what to do. “Delphi, he’s going to come out guns blazing. Command can’t sacrifice that kid.”

  The kid stops. He’s still over fifty meters away.

  “Get ready, Shelley,” Delphi says. My angel sight goes away, leaving nothing to distract me.

  My position is behind the cab, in the dark beyond the road. I get my feet under me. Crouched, waiting, I pass the pistol to my left hand.

  The cab’s window rolls open, an elbow sticks out, and a tentative voice calls, “Howdy!”

  “Howdy, sir!” the kid answers with perfect midnight innocence. “You got a truck jack, sir?”

  “Geez, son,” the driver whines. “You don’t carry your own jack?”

  Delphi says, “Go, Shelley.”

  I go, using all the augmented power I have. My first leap takes me to the edge of the pavement. The driver hears the impact of my footplates. He turns to look, forgetting to use the mirror. I’m already in motion.

  My second jump puts me on the running board, beside the window, which is rapidly closing. The driver is so startled by my sudden proximity that he throws himself sideways across the seat, leaving the window only half-closed. I try the door handle, just in case, but it’s locked, so I shove my gun hand through the remaining gap in the window while grabbing the steel loop of an outside grip with my other hand to keep from falling down.

  The driver is still sprawled across the seat, but he decides to fight back, bringing his booted foot up and aiming a vicious kick at my gun hand.

  I’ve got the pistol aimed at his face. I could kill him easily, but Kendrick said I’m not supposed to; I’m not supposed to break the window either. We want the truck to show no sign of damage. I yank my hand back.

  “You kill me and you’re blowing up New York,” he screams.

  I knew it.

  Fuckwad.

  Delphi says, “Reach down and to your left. Along the armrest. Hit all of those buttons. One’s the power lock.”

  “Can’t. Gun’s in my hand.”

  I reach through anyway. The driver tries again to kick me. This time I hit his shin hard with the gun barrel. I can’t get much of a swing, but the impact is solid. He gasps, and for a few seconds he’s frozen in pain.

  Ransom breaks in over gen-com: “LT, you need help with that door?”

  “Get up here!”

  He lunges onto the running board, huge in his dead sister. I can’t see through his black visor, but I imagine him grinning.

  I’m not.

  “Get the door unlocked! I don’t want blood in our new truck.”

  “Yes, sir!” He reaches through the open window, groping for the power lock.

  I hear a click and pivot away from the door so Ransom can get it open. I’m still holding the steel loop of the handgrip as I swing around, but I’ve made a rookie mistake. If I’d grabbed the loop with my dead sister’s arm hook, my rig would take the weight, but now it’s my right arm that has to hold everything up: my body weight plus an eighty-pound pack, and the weight of my dead sister. I groan. My shoulder is close to separating as the door swings open, so I am not in a good mood as I hurl myself into the cab.

  My temper doesn’t improve when I see the driver has pulled a pistol that he’s bringing to bear on me. Using the butt of my own gun, I hammer him in the crotch, eliciting a scream that cuts off sharply when the pain closes up his throat. His weapon tumbles to the floor. Using my arm hook, I grab him by the belt and haul him with me as I back out of the cab. Ransom catches him before he can tumble to the pavement.

  • • • •

  “Goddamn it, Shelley!” Kendrick shouts. I can’t see his face past the black screen of his visor, but I get to hear his voice twice: both live and over gen-com. “I told you to take it easy!”

  We’re both looking down at the driver—Guidance says his name is Troy Butler—curled on the pavement in a fetal position, moaning and clutching his crotch.

  A mishmash of voices is in my ears as my helmet collects all the solo links between squad members and plays them for me at low volume. I hear Sergeant Nolan and Specialist Tuttle working to get the cattle truck put back together, and I hear Sergeant Vasquez and Specialist Harvey doing an inventory of the weapons carried in the back of the hijacked National Guard truck. They speak in clipped phrases because we’re in a hurry. We are scheduled to roll in seven minutes, but Kendrick wants to interrogate the prisoner.

  I still have the colonel’s pistol, so I use it to gesture at Troy Butler as he quivers on
the ground. “Sir, you just said not to kill him—and he’s not dead.”

  Kendrick looks up at me. I can’t see any hint of expression in the empty field of his black visor, but I have a good imagination. “Did I need to add, ‘Don’t emasculate him?’ I thought that might be assumed.”

  “I didn’t cut anything off. He’s just a drama queen.” I reach down and grab good old Troy by his arm. “Get the fuck up, cracker, before I shove this pistol up your ass.”

  Reality slips. Did I just say that? I let go of Troy’s arm and step back, certain that someone I don’t know just slipped inside my soul.

  “Damn it, Delphi,” I whisper. “What are you juicing me on?”

  “Whatever it is, Delphi,” Kendrick says, “back it off a couple of notches.”

  Eight hundred meters down the road, the engine revs on the cattle truck and Sergeant Nolan shouts directions.

  Kendrick nudges Troy Butler with the toe of his footplate. “I advise you to get up now, PFC Butler, because we are all tired and cranky, and it would be really easy for my juiced-up LT to make a body disappear out here in the ass-end of nowhere.”

  Threats never sound hollow when Kendrick makes them. Troy Butler foregoes groaning on the asphalt and, pulling himself together, he manages to struggle to his feet. He is not in uniform, but he is a National Guardsman. He picks that moment to remember the fact. Straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders, he turns to Kendrick and salutes. “Private First Class Troy Butler, reporting for duty, sir.”

  Kendrick crosses his arms over his chest. “About fucking time.”

  I consider raising the pistol and bringing it down on the back of Troy’s turncoat skull, but Delphi is riding me, and she whispers, “Chill.”

  “Lieutenant Shelley,” Kendrick says, “I think it’s best if I have my gun back now.”

  “Give it to him, Shelley,” Delphi warns.

  “Stop nagging me,” I whisper between clenched teeth—but I step around Troy and return the pistol to Kendrick. Down the road, the cattle truck is slowly straightening, its taillights blazing as it begins to roll away.