by Linda Nagata
Troy isn’t watching it; he’s watching me. Though he holds his posture at attention, his eyes roll to take me in; his hands are shaking. I still have my HITR, and I think we’re both wondering if Kendrick is going to let me shoot him.
“Private Butler,” Kendrick says. “I’m told you have a little sister named Trina Butler, who is currently living in Fargo? Is that true?”
Troy’s not worried about me anymore. He gives all his attention to Kendrick. In a breaking voice he says. “Sir, my sister has nothing to do with this! She’s got two kids—”
“Jared and Beth,” Kendrick agrees in a congenial tone. “Am I right?”
“Sir, please. What I did today, it was a mistake—”
“You’re goddamn right it was a mistake, Private! And when word gets out that Trina’s brother is a traitor—”
“Sir, please!”
“—that he’s part of the terrorist group who nuked American cities and took down the Cloud—”
“It wasn’t her fault!”
“Nobody’s going to care. People want blood. An eye for an eye. We took your sister and her kids into custody for their own protection.”
Troy turns out to be smarter than I would have guessed. “What do you want me to do, sir?” he asks in a subdued voice.
“Exactly what you were doing. Drive the truck. Show your papers at any checkpoints that require it. Be an eager participant in the Texan revolution . . . and don’t let it slip that your cargo has changed. Guidance will be watching through my eyes. If anything goes wrong—and I don’t care if it’s your fault or just bad luck—your sister and her kids disappear. That’s easy enough to understand, isn’t it, Private Butler?”
“Yes, sir. It is, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you for a chance to make up for the mistake I made this morning. I wouldn’a done it, sir, except I seen too many movies. Those lying fags in Hollywood just make it look like fun.”
“A weekend party,” the colonel agrees. Then, in an undertone that indicates he’s linked, “Vasquez, get out here. The LT’s a little strung out, so I think we’ll let him rest. You get to ride up front with me and keep an eye on our loyal Private Butler.”
“Coming, sir.”
It takes her three seconds to appear at the open cargo door of the National Guard truck. As she trots toward us, her inventory arrives on-screen in my visor. Just like Intelligence said, the truck is carrying artillery, along with lots and lots of shells.
I don’t like being dismissed by Kendrick, but I also don’t want to share the cab with Troy Butler, so I don’t argue. I just turn my temper on those soldiers walking back from the cattle truck. “This is not a Saturday stroll! Get your asses moving. We roll in three minutes!”
They pick up the pace. I throw Kendrick an ironic salute, nod at Jaynie, and head to the back of the truck to see if there is any room among the weaponry to lie down and go to sleep.
• • • •
There is no room to lie down.
And we’re under orders to stay rigged.
I stand just outside the open cargo doors, making a head count as our people climb in. Jaynie is beside me, waiting to close and lock the doors, while Sergeant Nolan is just inside, duplicating my count and chivvying people to move to the back and make room.
The dead sisters, so fleet and agile in the field, turn awkward as soldiers clamber over pallets of ammo and squeeze past the two big guns. The cargo container isn’t loaded to the top, but there isn’t much empty floor space either. I open a solo link to Kendrick, who is in the cab, keeping an eye on our prisoner. “We need to dump some of this stuff.”
“Can you get all our people in there or not?”
I check my count—only Flynn, Ransom, and me still to go. Flynn climbs in; Ransom follows. I jump up next to Nolan. “We’re all in now, but it’s tight.”
“I don’t want to risk discovery. It’s only going to be a couple hours, so get the doors shut and make the best of it.”
Jaynie links in. “Ready, LT?”
I give her a thumbs-up. She swings one door shut and then the other. Handles are levered; locking rods slam into place.
For a second it’s too dark for my night vision’s photomultiplier to work. Then a couple of LED flashlights come on. Flynn’s got one in her mouth as she crawls across pallets to get farther back.
“Heads up,” Kendrick warns over gen-com. “We are moving in ten seconds.”
“Secure yourselves!” Nolan barks.
He takes his own advice, folding into a crouch in a small open space beside Ransom, under the muzzle of the first gun. I use the same maneuver to go down. The dead sisters don’t make it easy to sit, but it turns out to be possible. My back is toward the cargo doors, my robot legs bent at their artificial knees. I lean against my pack, trying to ignore the discomfort of the dead sister’s back frame. The truck starts to roll. I can hear the tires grind against the pavement as Troy progresses through the gears.
I link to Kendrick again. “Air is going to be a problem.”
“If anyone starts to suffocate, I’m sure Guidance will let me know.”
I close the link and touch Delphi. “Still there?”
Her answer comes right away. “Until the war is over.”
“Did you pick up any sign of the Red?”
“The Cloud’s broken, Shelley. The Red’s gone. I’m the only one messing with your headspace now.”
“I don’t know how much I like being an ordinary mortal.”
She doesn’t answer. Chitchat isn’t professional.
I tell her, “When you’re messing in my headspace, try not to turn me into a mean-ass gangster killer, okay?”
“Go to sleep, Shelley.”
Like I have a choice. The skullnet icon flickers, and I’m out.
• • • •
My head is full of dreams that vanish as I snap back into awareness. I can’t recall a single image, but my brain is mired in a residue of dread. It’s as if I’ve wakened into an awareness that we are trapped, all of us, prisoners in a pointless struggle that will never change one damn thing in the world. I fight a looming sense of panic. It’s not easy to do while breathing the close, stinking air inside the cargo container, with nothing to see but darkness beyond the pearlescent glimmer of my visor’s latent icons.
I need more to look at, and I need to know where we are, so I pull up a map. At first I can’t make any sense of it. It’s just a jumble of lines drawn on a meaningless textured background. I suck fortified water from my pack to get more calories into my system, and then I check the time. We’ve been on the road two hours and twelve minutes.
My helmet filters out the road noise, amplifying the smaller sounds: the scrape of a strut against the floor, the whisper of cloth against cloth, a soft cough from a dry throat. Someone—Ransom or Nolan—shifts, bumping a strut against my right footplate. I pull my foot back, and check the map again. I’m more alert now, and this time what I see makes sense to me. We’ve circled around, so we’re well south of C -FHEIT.
Kendrick speaks on gen-com: “We’re coming to a checkpoint. I’m with Vasquez, out of sight in the bunk behind the seats. We are going to try to get through without incident, so no movement, no sound, no lights—but be prepared to fight.”
I slide a few millimeters as the truck decelerates, before bracing myself with my hands. I’m listening hard to my helmet audio, hoping for some hint of what’s going on outside, but we’re still rolling, so all I hear are engine and tire noises, and a loose rod rattling in its socket on the door.
“If we are discovered,” Kendrick continues, his voice deadly calm, “we hit back hard and fast. Take out everyone at this checkpoint, and do it before our presence gets radioed in.”
Really? And how is that going to work? Surely someone at the checkpoint will be sitting on the side with a radio or a satellite phone in hand
. That’s how I’d do it. Take out everyone before word gets out is superhero bullshit. I put our odds of success at about one in a hundred—and if we fail, New York gets blown up. No pressure there. God, I hope Troy really loves his sister. I hope he’s good at lying.
I decide to ignore Kendrick’s order to sit tight. If we’re going to fight, I want to go into it as light, as agile, as fast as I can be. So I slip out of my backpack. No point in carrying the extra weight or taking the chance that it will catch on something in close quarters.
“Easy,” Delphi warns. “The goal here is to avoid a fight.”
I focus on the word understood. My skullnet picks it up and transmits it without my having to speak aloud. But just because we don’t want a fight, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get one.
Slowly, silently, I turn over. I get my feet under me until I’m crouched facing the cargo doors. I have my M-CL1a in hand. My finger is beside the trigger.
I think, Prep Ransom and Nolan.
“You got a bad feeling?” Delphi asks.
Edgy.
Behind me, I hear a faint creak of struts, then there’s a touch against my shoulder. I check the squad map, confirming that Ransom is right behind me, and Nolan is crouched beside him.
The truck comes to a stop with the diesel engine still rumbling, the loose rod still rattling. I can’t hear anything from outside.
“Three enemy visible,” Delphi informs me as she switches on angel sight. “All armed with assault rifles.”
In night vision, I’m looking down on an anonymous four-way intersection, surrounded by terrain that is all too familiar. Though we’ve been on the road over two hours, we’re still stuck in the same ass-end of nowhere, with barbed-wire fences providing the only vertical relief in a flat, featureless rangeland.
By contrast, the intersection is busy.
Directly in front of our National Guard truck, two big pickup trucks are parked sideways across the road, blocking the way. A third pickup waits on the shoulder, its headlights illuminating the road on our driver’s side. Enemy Number 1 is standing on the running board of our truck, looking in the driver’s window, the stock of his weapon cradled in his bent arm. I can’t see the muzzle, because he’s got it aimed inside the cab. Enemy Number 2 stands on the road below, a man with a huge belly, his posture tense as he holds his assault rifle in a two-hand, cross-body grip. Number 3 is a slender shadow stalking cautiously alongside the truck, heading toward the back.
More? I ask, staring at the pickup trucks.
Delphi says, “No indication that anyone remains in the pickups, but that is not confirmed.”
Kendrick links again to gen-com, but he doesn’t speak. Instead, he pipes his audio to us so we can hear what he’s hearing. Right now that’s a man with a drawling, high-pitched voice, confidently explaining the facts of life:
“Listen here, Troy, my friend. I know you’re a loyal son of the revolution, but the fact is, you got no manifest. So no one’s gonna miss a thing if the rest of us help ourselves to a little bit of your cargo. After all, we all gotta make a living.”
Troy speaks, his voice sounding louder, closer. “Sweet Jesus,” he says. “Buddy, would you get that fucking gun out of my face?”
Enemy Number 3 has reached the back of the truck. Through angel sight I watch him try the lever that opens the cargo doors; with my ears I hear the mechanism clang and bang, but a lock keeps it from opening. Number 3 retreats to where he can see the cab. There’s too much engine noise, too much rattling steel to hear him, but it looks like he’s yelling up to the front. Buddy confirms this when he says, “Troy, I’ll get this gun out of your face when you turn over the key to the cargo.”
Give him the key, I think—because I like Buddy even less than I like Troy.
Troy’s not too impressed with Buddy either. “Just give me a fuckin’ minute. The key’s up top, in a locker alongside the bunk.”
“Yeah?” Buddy says. “You make sure it’s a key you grab, or your brain’s gonna be all over the roof.”
“Take it easy,” Troy grumbles. I hear scrunching sounds—shoes on the vinyl seat?—and then Troy’s voice gets louder. “I ain’t that devoted to the revolution.”
A click . . . muffled noises . . . then Troy, distant again: “Here. Have at it.”
“You come on down out of the truck for a minute,” Buddy says.
In angel sight, I see Buddy jump down from his perch beside the cab door. The door opens, and Troy climbs down. They walk together toward the back of the truck, the fat man with the weapon trailing behind them.
Kendrick whispers over gen-com. “Shelley, Nolan, Ransom, this is your party. Don’t shoot each other, and try not to shoot Troy. Everyone else, hunker down and do not participate unless ordered to do so.”
Angel sight shows me three men standing behind the truck and one more off to the side. That one is Troy, who has positioned himself outside our immediate zone of fire. He really is a lot smarter than he seems.
Buddy is holding a flashlight so that its beam shines on the back of the truck. Number 3 stoops to work the lock. When I hear steel clang, and then the grinding of a lever, I drop out of angel sight and watch with my own eyes as a single door swings slowly open. The flashlight beam reaches through the gap and rakes across my visor. All I can see in night vision is a shapeless green glare.
I shoot anyway, a short burst.
“Fuck! ” Buddy screams as the flashlight disappears, and I know I missed him.
The door swings shut.
I launch myself at it, hitting it with my shoulder. As it slams back, I jump out, shooting a burst at the place where the fat man was standing when I last saw him with angel sight. He’s still there. As my robot feet hit the pavement, he goes down with two dark holes in his chest. His weapon clatters to the asphalt, unfired.
I swivel, looking for another target, but Buddy and Number 3 are nowhere in sight. A shattering of small-arms fire comes from the side of the truck. I duck back, sheltering behind the open cargo door, but as I move, a power surge like I’ve never felt before makes my left leg spasm. The knee twists sideways. Searing pain shoots up my hip. I lose my balance and go down, but I’m able to roll onto my belly, with the HITR in my hands.
I’m aware of Nolan and Ransom, leaping over my head as they exit the truck, but I’m not watching them. All I’m looking for is a targeting circle in my display.
It pops into existence and I cover it, firing a burst as chips of pavement kick up beside me. It turns out my target is Buddy. The bullets hit him in the chest, knocking him into the air for a half second before gravity body-slams him to the road. He doesn’t move.
“Where’s Number Three?” I shout over gen-com.
“Number Three is down,” Kendrick says in a calm and deliberate voice. “Where’s our prisoner?”
I turn to look at the place where Troy was standing before the shooting started. Nolan’s there now. “Got him, sir,” the sergeant says. Troy is belly-down on the ground, his arms over his head. He must have dropped at the first shot. Smart man.
“Get him up,” Kendrick says. “Shelley, you still with us?”
“Yes, sir. Are we clear?”
“We damn well better be, but I want a sweep.”
“On it.”
I roll over and sit up, the pain in my hip gone as fast as it came. Above me, most of our dual LCS is crowded in the open doorway, everyone labeled with a name. I pick some at random. “Harvey! Take Fernandez and Hoang. Circle around. Look for problems.” They jump out eagerly and disappear around the truck. “Tuttle! You, Moon, and Wade, go check the pickup trucks.”
“The rest of you get the bodies,” Kendrick adds, “and load them into the back of one of the pickups.”
Everyone bails out over my head, landing with rattling thumps on the pavement. More than one whispers a fervent thank-you to God for the fre
sh air, which really isn’t all that fresh given that it’s laden with the stink of gunpowder—but compared to the noxious air inside the truck, it’s golden.
As they clear out, I test my left leg, bending the robot knee and flexing the ankle. This produces no repeat of the weird electric surge that knocked me down. So I get my feet under me and, moving cautiously, I stand up again. When I put weight on the leg, it’s stable.
That’s when I notice what looks like a bullet hole in my fatigues, just above the left knee. I lean down to inspect it, putting my little finger through it, just to prove to myself that it really is a hole.
Someone comes around from the side of the truck. My visor tells me it’s Jaynie. “Are you hit?” she asks.
“It’s starting to look that way.”
She grabs a little LED flashlight, and squats to look. Her finger slips into the hole; she flinches when she feels the titanium bone. “I think there’s a dent.” She looks up at me uneasily. “Do you still work?”
I raise my left foot, put it down again. “Seem to.”
My adrenaline high is draining away and I’m starting to feel shaky, especially when I consider how close that bullet came to hitting my living flesh.
Still crouching, Jaynie shines her flashlight in a circle on the pavement around us. “Gotcha.” She gets up, takes a couple of steps, and picks up something from the road. “Here, I think this is yours.”
I hold out my hand. Her flashlight shows the blob of a spent bullet dropped into my palm.
Dr. Masoud once implied my robot legs were better than natural. I have to admit, he might be right. I’m a faster runner now, I’ll never twist a knee or an ankle, and bullets bounce off the titanium instead of shattering my natural bones.
Jaynie asks, “How many lives are you planning to burn through before you make your twenty-fourth birthday, Lieutenant?”
“I guess it depends on how many I’ve got.”
Her voice drops. “You still King David? Is God still with you?”