The Red

by Linda Nagata

  Ever since Kendrick fired the string of explosives that initiated our assault, we’ve moved so fast, I’ve been only half-conscious of rising pain: a deep, merciless throbbing from the impacts I took during our shootout with the microdrones, and a low burn of feedback from the robot legs. The skullnet modulates my perceptions, but it can’t knock everything out . . . and I start hurting a lot worse as my body cools down during those drawn-out seconds while I’m watching the snowcat drop away.

  I’m not the only one hurting. We’ll need to do a squad-wide injury assessment, and distribute painkillers if we can sweet-talk Guidance into—

  Fuck.

  No Guidance. No Delphi. We’re on our own.

  Nolan speaks over gen-com. “Sir, incoming call on the plane’s satellite phone. Caller ID is Carl Vanda.”

  Tuttle brings the ramp back up, as Kendrick speaks in a whispery voice that’s beginning to slur. “Get your ass up front, Shelley, and lead.”

  • • • •

  The cockpit is dark, except for the dim glow of instruments and tiny spotlights. The light illuminates four swivel seats: two in front for the pilot and copilot, and two behind for crew. In the pilot’s seat is a thin, pallid, sharp-featured woman with short, light-colored hair flattened under her headset. She turns to look at me with wide, frightened eyes. Even in the dim light I can see that her hands are shaking.

  Nolan is in the copilot’s seat. He’s taken off his rig, but his helmet is still on. Behind him I recognize our ally, Lucius Perez, from his picture in the mission briefing. He’s wearing a headset just like the pilot. Opposite him, anonymous in her helmet, is Flynn. I want to kick Perez out of the cockpit, but I don’t want Sheridan to see him, so I’m stuck.

  Nolan gestures, indicating the pilot, and over gen-com he tells me, “Sir, this is Ilima LaSalle. Retired Air Force.”

  I route gen-com to my overlay, and then I take off my helmet so I’m something more than an anonymous goon in her eyes. Nolan hands me a headset to muffle the engine noise, and to allow me to speak easily with Ilima. I adjust the position of the mic. When I look up, Ilima is staring at me with stunned recognition.

  “You’re James Shelley,” she says over the intercom.

  I’m not above using my celebrity status. “Which show did you see, Ilima? Bleeding Through ?”

  “I saw them both.”

  “I want you to know that everybody here is a veteran of Black Cross. We are not here to hurt you, and I am personally apologizing that you’ve been caught up in this mission. We were led to believe that you agreed in advance to help us.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know why you’re here.”

  “Our mission is to bring Thelma Sheridan to trial. Ilima, she supplied the nuclear devices that caused the Coma.”

  Ilima looks away from me. There’s terror in her eyes, but strangely, she doesn’t look surprised.

  “Did you suspect it?” I ask her.

  “No! But I’ve . . . carried cargo before that I’ve wondered about.” She turns to me again. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “We need you to fly this plane. You’re the only one here who can, so I have to require your cooperation. I will not let this mission fail. But when we’ve delivered Thelma Sheridan, you’ll be released unharmed. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do.”

  We’re heroes, so it’s easier for her to believe we won’t kill her.

  “Where’s the satellite phone?” I ask.

  “You’ve got the headset on. I just have to connect you.”

  “No, not me.” I don’t want to give Carl Vanda my voice print. So I turn to Perez. “You’re going to talk to him.”

  “No! He needs to think I’m a hostage too.”

  “So tell him you’re a hostage. And tell him we’re not ready to talk. If he can keep quiet about what happened, we’ll contact him with our ransom demand when we’re secure.”

  I left my HITR with the packs, but I brought a Beretta with me. Not the one that killed Ransom—I don’t ever want to touch that one again. This is the one Rawlings gave me. It’s clean, its clip-on holster secured to my thigh. I draw the gun, using its lethal shape to augment the gravity of my words. “You’ve done your part, Perez, and I don’t need you anymore. If you even hint to Carl Vanda that this is anything but a kidnapping-and-ransom situation, I will kill you.”

  Despite the chill of the cockpit, a sweat breaks out on his cheeks. “I’ll . . . I’ll say what you want.”

  Ilima routes the call to him. I listen in. There’s a whispered strain in Carl Vanda’s voice that hints at his injuries, but his tone is calm, cold, as he talks to Perez, who can’t help stuttering. I’m glad I pulled the gun on him. It’s helped him to do a convincing job of sounding afraid.

  As soon as the basics are conveyed, I cut the call off. Then I tell Nolan to disconnect the satellite phone. It’s a security risk, and I don’t want any more unexpected calls.

  Ilima and I go over our route. We’ll fly over the North Pole, a northern “great circle” route, and then south above the Atlantic. I’m not entering the airspace of any other country if I don’t have to.

  Jaynie appears at the top of the cockpit ladder. She’s taken off her helmet. Her audio loop glistens in one ear, and she’s got an earplug in the other. Her voice comes to me through the overlay. “You need to see the colonel.”

  Her tone tells me all I need to know.

  I take off the headset. She hands me earplugs. As we head down into the brightness of the cargo hold, my dark-adjusted eyes strain to adapt. “I want you to take my helmet,” I tell her, handing it over as we walk back through the plane. “Set it up so the cam is focused on our prisoner at all times. I don’t want any trumped-up allegations coming back to bite our asses.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then I want all the firearms collected and secured in the firearms locker. Bring me the key.”

  “Anything else, sir?”

  “You’re already putting together a watch rotation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Moon is with Kendrick. He’s fiddling with the valve on a bag of clear fluid feeding into Kendrick’s arm through an IV. Like Jaynie, he’s got his helmet off, with one ear wired and the other plugged. “Is there a problem?” I ask him.

  “I-I’m not sure. We found this emergency survival kit, and the dates are good to go on the IVs, but it’s been a year since I last trained with this stuff. Shit. I just wish I could talk to Guidance.”

  I check the IV, and it looks okay to me. “You’re doing fine on your own, Moon.”

  But even if he was a fully trained medic, I don’t think he could do Kendrick any real good. The colonel looks bad—wan and shocky, his breathing shallow. Though his eyes are open, they don’t seem to see me when I kneel beside him.

  When I was airlifted out of Dassari, I received expert trauma care. Kendrick isn’t going to get that. We’re going to be flying at least thirteen hours before refueling. We can’t land, for fear we won’t be allowed to take off again. And while we’re in the air, there’s almost nothing we can do for him.

  I open a solo link to him. “Colonel Kendrick? How you doing?”

  His eyes blink, shift, focus on me. Gen-com filters out the noise of the plane and boosts his voice . . . but it’s still weak and gravelly. “Episode three has turned out to be a bitch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s in your hands now, Shelley . . . as much as that scares the fuck out of me. Do not let the enemy get under your skin . . . and don’t fuck it up.”

  “Colonel, you—”

  “Shut up . . . I don’t want to hear it. You need someone . . . to talk to . . . talk to Vasquez. And check in . . . with Rawlings.”

  “Will do, sir.”

 
“And finish the . . .”

  “We’ll finish the mission, sir.”

  He closes his eyes. His breathing is shallow. I watch him for a few minutes, while across the cargo hold Sheridan demands to know what the hell we think we are doing. Harvey is guarding her. She’s the only one still wearing a helmet. She keeps her anonymous, unfeeling face turned on the prisoner and doesn’t reply.

  I step away from Kendrick, unstrap from my dead sister, fold it up, and stash it with the others. “Tie these down,” I tell Tuttle. “The packs too.”

  Ransom is still lying out in the open. I need to do something about that.

  I ask Moon where the survival kit is. When he shows me, I paw through it and to my grim relief, I find three body bags. Tuttle helps me secure Ransom inside one of them. I try not to look at his face. It is not at peace—not with the back and the top of his head blown out. I want to know why the Red didn’t warn him, why it let him die. I don’t want to believe his life didn’t matter, that he was just a spear carrier in someone else’s drama. I want him to be alive.

  I send Tuttle to help Jaynie collect the weapons. Then I drop into one of the many empty seats and open a solo link to Colonel Rawlings. The angel, parked nearby in the cargo hold, anonymizes the request and relays it to a satellite network, which in turn relays it to a randomly selected gateway server that shunts the call through a private network—and Rawlings picks it up. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. Phase one complete.”

  “The full record got through?” I ask him.

  “Everything. All the records from the helmet cams, and your overlay.”

  “Then you know Matthew Ransom is dead. And Colonel Kendrick, he’s . . .”

  “The mission remains,” Rawlings says in a brusque tone. “You must get the DNA test done.”

  Ahab Matugo will not let us land in the city of Niamey, his adopted capital, unless we prove by DNA that the prisoner we carry truly is Thelma Sheridan.

  “The DNA test is next, sir.”

  Which means I have to talk to Thelma Sheridan.

  My head plays games with me. I flash on a sequence of memories: the way my hair stood on end that day I talked to her at Kelly AMC; the mind-stripping glare of the nuke dissolving the two pilots who forced her rocket down; Ransom’s head snapping back as the first bullet ripped through his brain.

  I’m going to need Jaynie at my back.

  • • • •

  The engines mask the sound of our footsteps, so Thelma Sheridan doesn’t notice as Jaynie and I approach. She’s hunched in her seat, balanced on its edge in an effort to ease the pressure of hands cuffed behind her back. A blanket is spread across her lap, but she still looks cold. I almost feel sorry for her—until I see spatters of Ransom’s blood clotted in her short, coppery hair.

  My helmet is strapped down two seats away, its camera watching her, watching us. Harvey is still standing guard. Keeping the blank face of her helmet fixed on the prisoner, she speaks on gen-com: “LT, this bitch is a babbling psycho-killer. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to wash the crazy off.”

  “Take a break, Harvey.”

  “Glad to, sir.”

  Jaynie says, “Be back here in ten.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Sheridan notices when Harvey moves away. She lifts her head—and sees me. Shadows play on her gaunt face. She’s no coward, though; I have to give her that. She gathers herself, sitting up straighter. “Lieutenant James Shelley,” she says over the sound of the engines. “You will lament this day.”

  I drop out of gen-com. “I already do, ma’am.”

  Her gaze moves across me from head to toe, noting all the details. “You’re not army anymore, are you, Mr. Shelley? No one here is wearing insignia. And you stole my plane. You’re a terrorist, nothing more.”

  All true.

  I breathe slowly, deeply, determined not to lose my temper. The red veins of the skullnet icon pulse almost in time to my booming heart. I desperately wish the plane was quiet.

  “I am here to collect a DNA sample, ma’am.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “We need a cheek scraping.”

  “I can see the Red inside your eyes.”

  Jaynie’s behind me, wearing latex gloves and holding a cheek swab. I turn to her and mouth the word, Ready? When she nods, I move quickly, grabbing Sheridan in a choke hold—no way I’m going to risk Jaynie getting bitten or head butted. Sheridan stiffens, but she doesn’t struggle. She may be crazy, but she’s not stupid.

  Jaynie inserts a finger into the corner of Sheridan’s mouth, follows with the swab, and takes a scraping. As she steps away, I release Sheridan.

  She looks at me, calm and unflustered. “It’s not too late to save yourself, Mr. Shelley, but all our days are numbered.”

  I glance toward the front, looking for Harvey, wishing she’d come back already so I can make a coward’s retreat. Jaynie is a few chairs down, transferring the DNA sample to a clear film for an automated analysis. “How could the LT save himself ?” she shouts over the ambient noise.

  Sheridan and I turn, both of us surprised by Jaynie’s question, but Sheridan recovers first. “We’re very close,” she says, and though she’s projecting her voice, she sounds like a normal person—calm, interested, not at all unhinged. “I’m part of a consortium funding a massive research effort to undermine the Red. A cybervirus is under development—it’s very close to testing stage—and when it’s released into the Cloud, it will hunt down every aspect of the Red, every algorithm, until the Cloud is clean again.”

  “How do you know it will work?” Jaynie asks without looking up.

  “Because the brightest minds in cyber science tell me it will.”

  Jaynie looks up at me and, projecting her voice, she says, “LT, if there’s a way—”

  I switch to a solo link. “It’s bullshit, Jaynie. There’s no magic cyber potion.”

  Her face goes stony. “How can you know that? Viruses wreck programs all the time—”

  “If there was something that could knock the Red out, it would have happened already. The Red uses viruses. It has to.”

  Maybe Sheridan can lip-read. She leans toward Jaynie and says, “You have to understand, he can’t help it. The Red speaks through his mouth.”

  “Sergeant, are you done with the test?”

  “It’s still processing, sir.”

  I switch over to gen-com. “Harvey, get your ass back here.”

  The test finishes up; the kit automatically relays the results to Colonel Rawlings, and to an address provided by Ahab Matugo.

  Harvey comes back. I have her cut the cuffs, then she and Jaynie escort our mass murderer to the toilet. When Sheridan comes back I cuff her feet but leave her hands free. “Very kind of you, Mr. Shelley. I thought maybe you’d be sticking a gag in my mouth.”

  Tempting.

  “Ma’am, we are required to offer you humane treatment. Since our own government has refused to pursue a case against you for your involvement in the Coma, you will appear before an international tribunal where evidence will be weighed and your guilt determined.”

  She looks stunned. Maybe she thought our purpose was a simple ransom kidnapping, or maybe she assumed we were a death squad sent by the Red to interrogate and then eliminate her, but she realizes now we’re something else altogether.

  “That’s outrageous. You can’t be serious. You can’t actually believe you will ever be allowed to put someone like me on trial.”

  “It will happen,” I assure her. “Good soldiers are willing to give their lives to see that it does.”

  “Good soldiers? Soldiers are a commodity. They can be purchased at roughly a quarter-million dollars each. This plane is worth a hundred times all of you put together. And that’s nothing. That’s less than the political subsidies I provide every year. Do you think my
politicians want me testifying at your tribunal? Do you think my peers will allow me to speak? They will not. They want no unrest in their kingdoms. You’ve been set up, Shelley. None of us will live to see the inside of a courtroom. The slam is coming.”

  • • • •

  I hold a meeting with my senior sergeant not far from Kendrick’s bedside. There is no office, no conference room, no hope of real privacy on this plane. Only the thrumming of the engines can keep what I have to say between me and Jaynie, but that won’t prevent us from being watched. Harvey, Tuttle, Moon . . . they’re trying not to make it obvious. Sheridan isn’t that subtle. She’s staring at us from across the bay, a knowing look on her shadowed face.

  I turn my body, so she can’t see my lips move. Jaynie shifts too, side-eyeing me with a resentful gaze. We’ve got a solo link open. “I need to ask you, Sergeant, who is the enemy?”

  Her chin rises; her lip curls. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Jaynie Vasquez openly angry. “Thelma Sheridan is the enemy, sir!”

  “That’s right, Sergeant, and you let her play you.”

  “The Red is also our enemy. When Sheridan suggested there is a means—”

  “The Red is not our enemy. It’s not our ally. It just is, like the weather.”

  “There is no virus that can get rid of the weather, sir.”

  “And there is no virus that can eliminate the Red.”

  “She said—”

  “She’s a lunatic.”

  “She might be a lunatic, but this consortium she mentioned has got to be employing the very best software engineers on the planet.”

  “Software engineers can lie like the rest of us, and tell their employers whatever they want to hear. You remember what you said, Jaynie, right before we left on this mission? You said that most people who know about this stuff won’t want to get rid of the Red. They’ll want to control it, and use it, so they can run things. That makes sense. It makes sense, because people want power. If they think they can grasp a new weapon, a new technology that can give them control over the world or the people around them, then they’ll take all kinds of chances. That’s the only reason we have any fucking nukes left in the world—because it gives governments power. It gives them control.”