The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  “Not over yet.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. I’m watching.”

  Pagan’s okay. Mostly, I get him at the end of a long shift like this one, but he’s been my primary handler on a couple of missions, and I’ve worked with him enough that I don’t mind having him inside my head. He’s efficient and polite, and when nothing is going on, he’s good at being invisible. He’ll stay in the background until my helmet comes off, and my helmet won’t come off until I’m safe inside the fort with the gate closed and the auto-defense active. Right now, I have to secure the trucks.

  I make Ransom re-park them on the south side of the fort, with the trailers perpendicular to the wall in a configuration that will provide minimal cover for insurgents. Then I have him unhook the cabs and turn them around so their front bumpers face the trailer hitches. No one is going to steal either the trucks or the equipment while they’re under my authority.

  The three dogs we left behind in the fort are ecstatic at our return. I drop my pack, and then take a minute for hugs and bruising tail thumps. After that, I get Ransom to help me haul down a crate of portable motion detectors from the bunk where they’re stored. We head outside, both of us still wearing armor and bones, with the dogs cavorting around us. The sun is dropping out of sight behind the sorghum fields and the spreading branches of the neem trees, lighting the clouds on fire as we set up the motion detectors all around the trucks—a little extra insurance in case a ghost gets past the permanent detectors that monitor activity in our vicinity. By the time we’re done, the first stars are gleaming in a twilight sky.

  I whistle the dogs back into the fort, and turn on the new motion detectors. Ransom disappears inside.

  It’s 1830. We’re supposed to undertake our nightly patrol in an hour and a half, but I check in with Pagan and get permission to put it off until 2200.

  Dubey and Yafiah are in the yard, sans armor and bones, cleaning and prepping the ATVs. I take off my helmet. “Yafiah, you’re on patrol. Get your gear ready, and get some sleep.”

  She looks daggers at me, but doesn’t say anything as she follows me inside.

  “Jaynie!” I bellow.

  “Yes, sir!”

  She appears at the door of the TOC in her sweaty T-shirt and mud-stained pants. “You and Dubey get to stay home tonight to guard the trucks. Ransom and Yafiah are on patrol with me.”

  Yafiah mutters something under her breath as she pushes past me, disappearing into the bunkroom. She’ll feel better after a few energy drinks.

  ~~~

  I close the door to my room—a tiny compartment just big enough for my bunk and a desk that I never use. As I lie down, I think Sleep. My skullcap picks it up, and in seconds, dream visions come walking through my head. One of them is a dragon I encountered in Texas.

  I’m so startled I wake up again, blinking at the white ceiling, tinged red with dust.

  I’ve got that unsettled feeling, like God’s been whispering hints in my back brain to kick loose the memory. My rational mind resists: I tell myself that what happened today is reason enough to remember her.

  It was at Dallas-Fort Worth. My flight out of Bolivia had been delayed by thunderstorms, leaving me only minutes to make my connection to New York, and I was in a grim mood, because my CO had made me turn in my skullcap before I went on leave.

  The first sign of trouble came in a commotion of voices in the crowded concourse. Ahead of me, civilians fell back against the glass, making way for a phalanx of eight black-uniformed mercenaries openly carrying sidearms in their shoulder holsters. I scrambled behind a pillar, breaking a fear sweat, sure I’d walked into the initial stage of a terrorist attack—but my overlay posted no alert, presenting only a simple annotation identifying the mercenaries as employees of Uther-Fen Protective Services, authorized to carry small arms anywhere, even in a public transportation hub.

  Around me, excited civilians bounced on their toes, straining to see over the heads of the mercs while asking each other, “Who is it? Is it an actor? Can you see?”

  So I looked too, and saw a civilian, a woman, mature but not old, walking among the mercenaries, her back straight, her gaze fixed ahead. She was tall and slender, with stiff gold hair—not blond, but gold—framing her face in a helmet cut. Her eyes were hidden by the tinted, curved lens of her high-end farsights. She wore a silky, gray, knee-length coat, and I had a feeling she was authorized to carry small arms too, and that she had a gun hidden away somewhere in that coat.

  My overlay identified her as Thelma Sheridan, principle stockholder of Vanda-Sheridan, making her one of the elite of the world—a dragon in possession of a hoard of treasure, and dangerous to disturb.

  In all the world, maybe three thousand people could be considered her peers. Maybe fewer.

  I felt stunned by the aura of her power; I saw the ruthlessness required to achieve her position written into her face.

  The double doors of a private lounge opened to receive her, along with her escort of armed guards. As the doors closed, a hissing sea of astonished whispers flooded the concourse, along with a few shrill bursts of nervous laughter. Dragons are rarely seen. Everyone there knew they’d been granted a glimpse into a hidden world.

  Afterward, I felt like an idiot because I’d let myself be intimidated by the mere fact of Thelma Sheridan’s wealth. I wondered what would have happened if I’d tried to confront her about the corruption of her employees in Bolivia. Pretty damn sure that would not have turned out well. Dragons don’t get where they are in the world by being nice.

  Our politicians make a lot of noise, they pretend they’re in charge, but dragons lurk behind them, in the shadows, where the real decisions get made.

  Again I think, Sleep. This time God is silent—or maybe I’m too tired to hear.

  ~~~

  I’m out for two hours. Then Guidance cues the skullcap to wake me. I find Jaynie in the TOC, still on watch; she still hasn’t showered. “Have we got a report on the angel?”

  “Yes, sir. Tech ran diagnostics on it. No issues were detected. Command says to proceed as normal.”

  So my three-person patrol heads out into the night, with five dogs to look after us, and one temperamental angel.

  Thick clouds hide the waxing moon, but the night is bright anyway with nightvision. We follow the map Guidance has put up in my visor—the route is different every night—and we move fast. At first the dogs think it’s a great game, but they start to lag so we slow down. They don’t turn up anything suspicious, and I’m not sensing anything either. I’m hoping for a quiet night when Pagan checks in with the news that a unit of ghost soldiers, nine in all, has turned up in the district west of us. There’s an ongoing firefight. Intelligence suspects a widespread infiltration attempt so the night’s satellite data from our district was reassessed. “Suspicious elements were found.”

  “Want to clarify that?” I ask. “Are we talking a confirmed presence, or just bogeys?”

  “Right now, bogeys. You get to figure out if they’re real.”

  Great.

  “Where?”

  A point lights up on the map, back in the territory we just cleared.

  “We just came through there.”

  “You were moving fast. We must have missed something.”

  I shunt the map to Yafiah and Ransom, who are a half klick away, one on either side of me. “Satellites have picked up bogeys, six kilometers back. We’re going to check it out.”

  “Yes, sir!” Ransom answers with enthusiasm. He’s been bored tonight.

  Yafiah manages to convey an entirely different meaning with the same two words.

  ~~~

  We search the area where the bogeys were seen and we hunt through the surrounding terrain, but nothing turns up. The dogs don’t find any suspicious scents, and I’m not nervous.

  “So what?” I ask Pagan. “Where are they? Or have you got noobs in Intelligence tonight?”

  “Maybe,” he allows. “I never know who’s preparing th
e reports. I just get the documents.”

  We resume our patrol, heading south again. The moon has set, so when the clouds break up they reveal a great vault of stars and satellites: bright white points against a dull, dark-green sky.

  Twenty minutes later, I know where the enemy is.

  It’s 0330. The angel is off to the northwest, ten klicks away and at the limit of its range when I look through its eyes and see a half-dozen goats, trotting in a line. Goats don’t like to move at night, so something has scared them. I send the drone back in the direction the goats are coming from—and after a few seconds I see tall grass moving beneath tree branches as if something large is passing there.

  “Pagan.”

  “I see it. Stand by.” He comes back maybe twenty seconds later. “We got at least seven ghosts.”

  “Damn it!” It’s over eight kilometers back, in territory we just swept a second time. “They must have their own drone. They knew when we were in the area and laid low.”

  “They can’t have a drone,” Pagan says. “We’d know about it. They were probably scanning for the angel’s EM transmissions. Or maybe they just got lucky.”

  The brush is thick around us. A chorus of insects still sings to the night, though not as many as when we started out. The air is humid and calm, and I’m so damn tired that everywhere looks the same to me.

  “Do we go after them?” I ask Pagan, because I just want to get it over with and get a chance to sleep.

  “Checking.”

  I’ve been stationary long enough to make Yafiah nervous. “L. T.? You okay?”

  “Ghosts,” I tell her. “Seven confirmed. Back the way we came.”

  “Fuck.”

  My feelings exactly, but Ransom is overjoyed. “Hot damn! Somethin’ to do tonight, after all!”

  Pagan comes back. “Command says let the ghosts go. They’re sending a kill drone. The insurgents are far enough from anywhere, that no one’s going to notice. Give Ransom my apologies.”

  ~~~

  We keep on for another hour before Command takes pity on us and sends us home. The stars are still out in force when Fort Dassari opens its gates to receive us. The dogs run to drink water, and then collapse in exhaustion.

  My people don’t have that luxury. Our equipment has to be cleaned, inspected, powered-up, and made ready, before anyone gets to rest, because we could get called out at any time. Yafiah staggers as she steps free of her dead sister. Dubey catches her elbow and hands her an energy drink, which should keep her going long enough to finish her chores. I’ve passed through exhaustion into a state of calm clarity in which I do nothing that isn’t necessary and everything I do is in slow, smooth, deliberate motion. It’s close to being stoned.

  The HITRs are cleaned and plugged into the rack to get charged. Same thing for the helmets, but I leave my dead sister on for now.

  Yafiah takes a two-minute shower—I don’t even have to yell at her to hurry up—and disappears into the bunkroom. Ransom is right behind her. I join Jaynie in the tactical operations center, where she’s back on watch.

  It’s not easy to sit wearing a dead sister, so I just rest cock-hipped against a table. Jaynie turns from the bank of monitors, one smooth eyebrow raised, like she’s questioning my sanity. “Why are you still wearing your armor and bones?”

  I scan the monitors. I’m punchy with fatigue, but there are some things worth staying up for. “Bibata’s coming. She has to drop off the dog food.”

  Jaynie cracks a grin and shakes her head.

  “Highlight of my week,” I add in my own defense.

  “You know you can never—”

  “I know it.” I close my sandpaper eyes. “It’s just a game.”

  I know I’m on the edge of sleep when visions start showing up in my head. Lissa’s there, in Central Park with spring flowers all around, holding my hand and plotting to run away with me to spend the summer in Europe. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything she says. I don’t ever want to love anyone else.

  “You might want to lock up the joints of your dead sister before you fall over, sir,” Jaynie says with amusement in her voice.

  I startle awake; check the time on my overlay. Almost twenty minutes have passed. I scan the monitors again. “I go on leave in three months.” I’m a little worried about it. “I’ve heard Guidance policy is changed, and they’re letting us use our skullcaps on leave if we request it.”

  “I’ve heard that too. Going back to New York?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. My dad’s still there.” I look at her more closely, and I think to ask for the first time, “So what about you? Have you got someone? Are you married?”

  “Married?” she asks in disbelief. “Marriage is for people like you, Shelley. No one I know gets married. There’s no military benefits for it anymore. Marriage costs too damn much.”

  I shrug, annoyed because Jaynie has a talent for making me feel like a stupid kid.

  Granted, it’s not all that hard to do.

  “You fell a long way, didn’t you?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  She nods. “It’s easy to tell you come from a good family. The way you carry yourself, the way you talk. The fact that the army made you an officer even though you came in on a prison deferment.”

  I shrug. “The induction contract archives my record, so it’s like I didn’t do anything. If I clear my term, the record gets permanently expunged.”

  “Like it never happened.”

  “Yeah. Just a ten-year detour.”

  “So what did you do? What did they get you for?”

  “Gang rape and setting off a bomb in a public gathering place.”

  She rolls her eyes. “What was it? Frigging jaywalking?”

  I can’t believe it. She got it right on the first guess. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “What?”

  “Jaywalking. Illegal assembly. Disorderly conduct. Those were the initial charges. It’s not freedom we’re fighting for, you know that, right?”

  “What are you talking about, ‘freedom’? We’re fighting for a paycheck, right?”

  I laugh. “Yeah. That’s it exactly. Your paycheck, mine, the shareholders’.”

  “So what did you do? Participate in a riot?”

  “No.”

  Ransom and Yafiah have grilled me for months about my mysterious past and I never have told them why I’m here, but for some reason I tell Jaynie. Maybe I’m just tired. “It started with a nonviolent protest march, a rally against the war industry.”

  Her elegant eyebrows climb into high arcs of skepticism.

  I start to laugh, and she realizes it’s true.

  She leans forward, her mouth round with surprise. “Oh my God. No shit? You’re here, killing people, because you were found guilty of protesting the war industry?”

  “Beat that,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head in wonder, but she still isn’t buying it entirely. “Illegal assembly... that has to be a misdemeanor. How does that add up to ten years in the army?”

  No point in holding back now. “It was a big march, in Manhattan. I wasn’t part of the movement. I was just out on the street, a dumb kid with nothing to do on a Saturday night, so I thought it’d be cool to join the crowd.” I touch my gloved finger to the corner of my eye. “I already had the overlay. It was a prototype, new at the time.”

  “They’re still new. I never met anyone else who had one.”

  “That you know about.”

  She acknowledges the point with a nod. “But they are rare.”

  “And not cheap, either. I used mine to record the march. Then the cops started arresting people. I couldn’t believe it. Like, what happened to free speech?”

  It’s a rhetorical question, and she doesn’t answer.

  “When I questioned my arrest, the cops called it resisting. I recorded that. I recorded every fucking second of it. My arrest, the strip search, everything. The cops didn’t know I was cyborged, so it was easy. Afterwar
d, I published the video, and people could see the wreckage that used to be their civil rights. It really boosted the protest movement.”

  “Goddamn, I think I saw that video.”

  “You probably did.”

  “So you made an illegal recording and you published it.”

  “Yeah, that was the felony charge. The city government claimed I was infringing on people’s rights to privacy and exposing their cops to retribution. Of course these days, in Manhattan, you can’t walk down a street without being recorded.”

  She shakes her head. “Some balls, Shelley.”

  My cheeks heat up. “Not really. I just didn’t like getting pushed around by the cops, and I was pissed.”

  “Huh. You should get counseling for that.”

  The sun’s coming up outside, its first rays spearing through tree branches and casting long sharp shadows across the road. Bibata always comes just after sunrise. I watch the south road monitor, knowing it won’t be long before her truck shows up.

  “So how about you?” I ask Jaynie. “What’s your story?”

  She looks me in the eye. “I didn’t have to leave home, because I never had one. I do have ambition.”

  “And smarts and curiosity. Are you going for officer?”

  “I have my application in.”

  In the army it’s still possible to come from nowhere and wind up in command. In the civilian world, that just doesn’t happen anymore.

  We’re both startled by the gentle pinging of the peripheral alarm, but it’s just Bibata’s truck, still five-K out. “Right on time as always,” I say, getting up.

  “Mind your manners,” Jaynie warns me. “’Cause mama’s watching.”

  I grin, and after retrieving my helmet and rifle from the bunkroom, I head outside. The sun’s rays blaze against the roof of the fort, but the yard is still shadowed by the east wall. Dubey is grooming the dogs under the canopy. “Get rigged up,” I tell him. “Bibata’s here.”

  He nods, leashes the dogs, and then disappears inside.