The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  This brings up another question, one whose answer Elliot is sure to know.

  “What turned the Sahel into an air war? Do you have any idea?”

  He snorts. “You could have asked me that on the phone. It turned into an air war because Ahab Matugo played everybody. He convinced some deep-pocket DC to spot him two Shikra jets and some pilots. Rumor is he promised the DC that if the war escalated, they’d sell more Shikras to both sides. But after he slammed the border forts, he pointed a finger back at the arms merchants and blamed them for the escalation, which got him a ceasefire while the foreign participants think over whether or not they still want to play, if this conflict gets cranked up.”

  “So we got sacrificed to buy a ceasefire?”

  “Essentially.”

  “It wasn’t just Fort Dassari that got hit, was it?”

  “No. Four forts. But you were first. The others were evacuated by the time the Shikras showed up.”

  I nod, furious again over Yafiah and Dubey’s fate. If I’d trusted the whispers of God—or a rogue autonomous program, whichever the truth might be . . .

  My pity-fest is interrupted by the appearance of three MPs. They step past the sliding door and head straight toward us. It’s Elliot they’re interested in. “Mr. Weber, we’ve been asked to escort you off the premises.”

  “On whose authority?” Elliot asks calmly.

  “Mr. Weber, if you’ll just come with us.”

  “He’s here visiting me,” I say.

  One of them salutes. “Orders, sir.”

  I know they don’t have the authority to make a judgment call. “You’re not arresting him?”

  “No, sir. Just remove-from-premises.”

  I look up at Elliot. “Is your name on a security watch list?”

  “Shouldn’t be. I sued to have it removed.”

  “Okay, I’m going to ask about it, but for now you need to go with them.”

  His brows rise in surprise. “Just like that? You’ve gotten that good at obeying orders?”

  I stiffen. “That’s how it works here.”

  “You just do what you’re told? No matter what?”

  I can’t meet his gaze, so I glance at the bench, to find my dad and Lissa watching us with tense expressions. “This is my life now. I have to make it work.”

  “That’s the problem, Shelley. It’s not going to work. You’re employed by the defense contractors and they don’t give a damn about what happens to you.”

  The MP steps in. “Mr. Weber, you need to come with us. Now.”

  “No,” Elliot says gently. “I won’t come with you. You’ll have to arrest me.”

  “Elliot, don’t,” I plead. “Don’t make this a media circus.”

  “Don’t worry, Shelley. It won’t affect your record. It’s just a principle. Due process.”

  The MPs arrest him. I’m impressed with the calm professionalism on both sides: protestor and cops. It wasn’t like this in New York, where citizens were bullied and some of us wound up with blood on our faces.

  ~~~

  The administrator of Kelly Army Medical Center, Colonel Heather Gleason, scowls as she informs me, “The order to remove Mr. Weber came from me.”

  “Ma’am, Elliot Weber is a respected journalist. He was visiting me, and he was not violating any regulations.”

  Her condescending gaze is well-practiced. “Lieutenant Shelley, Mr. Weber is a well-known subversive. It’s clear to me he was using you for access to this facility, no doubt so that he can exploit the status of injured soldiers such as yourself to further his antimilitary agenda.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “It’s so-called journalists like him that stir up violence against the military. Fourteen deadly incidents of domestic terrorism so far this year, aimed at military facilities. Anarchists, secessionists, radicals on the right and left—they’re using this country’s economic stagnation to ignite resentment against us.”

  I focus on keeping my temper in check. It’s well within her power to deny me any visitors at all—but I’m not going to give her an excuse to do it, not with Lissa and my dad in the reception room outside her office door.

  “Ma’am, Elliot Weber is not a terrorist. He’s not associated with any terrorist group. He does not advocate violence. He disagrees with the government’s funding priorities, but that does not make him a criminal.”

  “I remind you, Lieutenant, you are an army officer. As such, you should not be associating with subversives like Mr. Weber. I strongly advise you to limit your contact with him and others of his ilk. In summary, I will not rescind the order. Dismissed.”

  I wish to God I could turn around and stomp out of her office.

  But I have to cajole the chair into taking me to the door. Colonel Gleason gets up, walks around her desk, and opens the unpowered door for me, which is even more humiliating—and it gets worse.

  Along with Dad and Lissa, and the receptionist at her desk, Specialist Bradford is in the reception room. She snaps to attention when she sees the colonel, holding a stiff salute until the office door closes again. Then she lets loose on me. “Lieutenant Shelley! Are you trying to get me demoted? Dr. Masoud just about had a meltdown when he found out you were involved in a security breach—”

  “It was not a security breach.”

  “And,” she goes on, as if I don’t far outrank her, “you do not have permission to be gallivanting around the hospital for hours on end. You are to be in bed. Doctor’s orders.”

  My dad stands up from the couch. We trade scowls. I know what he wants to say, but I don’t give him a chance. “It wasn’t Elliot’s fault that I got in trouble, Dad. I was a dumb kid, and I made a bad choice. You only blame him because you don’t want to blame me.”

  “You were a dumb kid,” he agrees. “Weber should have recognized that and told you to delete the damned video, but he let you post it on a site with massive traffic, and by doing that he took your future, and Lissa’s, and mine.”

  “It’s not forever, Dad.”

  “That’s my prayer. Always. That you get through one more day, one more night. That you get to come home.”

  There isn’t anything I can say to that. Lissa looks like she wishes she could just slink away. Specialist Bradford saves us. “I... need to get you to your room, sir.”

  My dad’s a gentleman, even if he’s pissed at me. He says goodbye at the elevator, giving me and Lissa a couple more hours together before she has to leave for the airport. We sit in my room and talk about anything at all except what we mean to each other.

  ~~~

  I wake up in the night.

  My overlay tells me it’s just past midnight. I check email, hoping to find something from Elliot saying he’s been released, but there’s nothing, because my access is cut off. No outside links. Just like I’m in a war zone.

  It could be fallout from Elliot’s visit, but my guess is an AI flagged my conversation with Lissa, the one with terms like “rogue autonomous programs,” “skullcap,” and “Pace Oversight”—and an actual human finally got around to listening to it. I’ll probably be locked down until Intelligence figures out there was no security breach.

  ~~~

  In the morning, I still have no outside links. I’m in my wheelchair, heading to physical therapy and trying to decide who I can complain to, when Colonel Kendrick speaks over the link in my overlay reserved for Guidance. “Shelley. To the conference room. Now.”

  He doesn’t bother to identify himself. He doesn’t need to. “Yes, sir.”

  I inform the wheelchair of the change in plans, it contacts the hospital elevator system, and within two minutes I’m rolling up to the door of Suite 114. Kendrick is holding it open for me.

  I’m expecting an interrogation on Lissa, or a tirade on my friendship with Elliot, but I’m wrong. The colonel closes the door with an emphatic thud. “You’ve managed to wake up a dragon.”

  “What? Who?” I realize I know the answer. “Thelma Sheridan.”

&nb
sp; He looks at me like I’m a bug that needs stepping on. “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “At Dassari, those were her engineers we arrested, her trucks that blew up with the fort.”

  “She doesn’t give a shit about that fiasco. She probably doesn’t even know about it, but she’s requested an interview with you. She’ll be here in about ninety seconds.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Or damn close to it,” Kendrick agrees.

  “What does she want with me?”

  “What everyone wants—to know how you knew those jets were coming. She got slammed. Someone set her up. Hacked her, maybe, because her analytics failed to detect the jets—and Vanda-Sheridan’s stock price tanked. The DCs stick up for each other most of the time, but they’ll put a knife in the back of yesterday’s best friend if there’s money in it.”

  “So what do you want me to tell her?”

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “The truth, of course.”

  “You want me to tell her that someone or something with advance knowledge of the air attack hacked through Guidance and got inside my skullcap?”

  He shakes his head in a world-weary way. “Lieutenant, do you know that’s what happened? Do you know it for a fact?”

  “No,” I concede. “It’s just a working hypothesis.”

  “And we don’t want to confuse a dragon with speculation.”

  “So I tell her I don’t know.”

  “You tell her that, and you repeat it however many times it takes, and while you’re doing that, you will be charming, and polite. Despite her recent setback, she still has enough treasure to buy anything she wants. Absolutely anything—and she already owns a platoon of Congressional zombies. So keep your smartass mouth in check and do not give her an excuse to launch a Congressional investigation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m told you still tire very easily.”

  I nod tentatively.

  “Make sure she’s aware of it, and get the fuck out of this room as soon as you can.”

  The colonel walks out. In less than a minute, the door swings opens again and Thelma Sheridan comes in. When I saw her at Dallas-Fort Worth, armed mercenaries surrounded her, but today she’s alone.

  She’s tall and gaunt, with pale skin, a flat face, and vaguely Asian eyes that blaze above hollow cheeks. Her hair is shining, metallic, copper-colored—not gold like I remember it—precision-cut to just below her ears. She’s dressed in a perfectly tailored business suit. A rose-gold cross sparkles in the V of her neckline. She’s not wearing farsights, but she has an audio loop on her right ear, with the arc of a tiny mic making a translucent line against her cheek.

  “Thank you for your service, Lieutenant Shelley,” she says, in much the same tone a staff sergeant might use to say Sit down and shut up.

  She walks past me. Her long body folds gracefully as she sits on the couch. Her knees press together, her hands clasp in her lap. She continues to speak, untroubled by my lack of a response. “Given the nature of your commission, your record is surprisingly impressive. The number of interdictions you were responsible for at Fort Dassari is almost... unbelievable?”

  She pauses for a few seconds, watching me curiously. She’s just accused me of lying, or faking my combat record, or some more obscure crime in the commission of which I arranged to kill too many enemy combatants while avoiding being killed myself. I give her my well-practiced stonewall gaze.

  She pushes a little harder. “You know and I know that your career has been affected by more than luck, more than skill. Sometimes, the Devil raises us up, only to throw us down from a greater height.”

  At Dallas-Fort Worth she had a dangerous aura. She still does. I try to direct the interview, so I can get away. “I was told you had questions for me, ma’am.”

  “You were aware of the air attack before it happened, Lieutenant. Who warned you?”

  “I was not aware of the air attack, ma’am. I did not know the fighters were coming.”

  “I’ve seen the video of the event, sir. You knew something was happening.”

  I tell her what I’ve told everyone else. “Yes, ma’am. I had a feeling.”

  “Are you psychic, Lieutenant?”

  “Not to my knowledge, ma’am.”

  “The Bible commands us, ‘Let no one be found among you who practices divination or sorcery.’ Deuteronomy 18:10.”

  Several smartass responses wrestle for priority release, but Kendrick made it clear I am not to antagonize Sheridan. I hold on to my stonewall expression. “I have not, to my knowledge, ever engaged in divination or sorcery, ma’am.”

  “You are being used, Lieutenant. For what purpose remains unclear, but there is a force at large in the world interfering in the affairs of Man. We built its house, when we built the Cloud. Now it moves among us, bleeding through every conflict, every transaction, watching, manipulating—and it does not have our best interests in mind.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. She’s just confirmed Lissa’s theory, but coming from Thelma Sheridan it carries a crazy quotient that makes me want to flee the room.

  “Ma’am,” I say in a voice gone hoarse, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her glare goes fiery. She doesn’t blink. “I think you do. This force has chosen tools to use, and you are one of those tools, Lieutenant Shelley. A disposable tool, to be used and thrown away.”

  I take refuge in what I resent. “Ma’am, I’m an army officer. That’s all.”

  I might as well not have spoken. She taps her finger against her head, close to the corner of her eye. “I was a tool as well. I used to wear farsights. My company’s main servers were hooked into the Cloud. But we were hacked. Subtly. In a way that left no trace, we were penetrated, our private data stolen and used against us. Used against you. By a train of coincidence our analytics failed to detect the transfer of two Shikra fighter jets to Ahab Matugo’s arsenal and our satellites failed to see them on the ground. The result was that Vanda-Sheridan failed to issue a warning.”

  No, the result was that Fort Dassari got slammed, and that Yafiah and Dubey are ashes—but I don’t say it aloud, because I want this interview done.

  “That’s a matter for Intelligence to unravel, ma’am.”

  “The Devil has given you his protection, Lieutenant, but it will not always be so. Confess what you know, forswear his gifts, cut yourself off from the Cloud that is his home, and stand up in defense of this world God has given us. For the Devil is everywhere. He is the red stain bleeding through into all the affairs of Men, and the army can’t protect you.”

  I swallow against a dry throat, unaccustomed to this intensity of crazy. “If that’s all, ma’am.”

  She nods and gets up. Then she remembers to hand me a business card. I take it, because that requires fewer words than a refusal. “There will be a reckoning,” she warns me. “Make sure you’re on the right side.”

  She strides out of the room, her back straight, heels clicking against the floor, a dragon off to terrorize another peasant. She is a defense contractor in control of vast wealth—more than many countries—and with access to elite weapons systems... and she’s talking herself into a war against a cyberspook that may not even exist.

  I flinch as a monitor on the wall comes to life. Colonel Kendrick gazes out at me. “You’ve got a deer-in-the-headlights expression, Shelley.” He shows his teeth in a grin. “What you just heard is psycho desperation. Vanda-Sheridan is having a hard time keeping up in the global marketplace.”

  “Sir, in her mind it’s a religious war. The Devil, hacking into human systems.”

  “I can pretty much guarantee it’s not the Devil hacking your head, Shelley. Don’t make the enemy more frightening than he really is. Intelligence likes the way your girlfriend thinks. They’re opening a contract with Pace Oversight just to see what turns up, but the best fit to current data is that we’re facing, at worst, a semiautonomous program designed to hack our soldi
ers—and we’re damn well going to take it out. Dismissed.”

  “Sir!”

  He gives me an impatient scowl.

  “My overlay—”

  “It’s been locked down by my order until your security is upgraded. You’ll be issued a standard tablet. See if you can figure out how to use it.”

  His image winks out.

  “Fuck.” I hate toting a tablet around, and they’re hard to use. Even the gaze-directed models require one free hand; the touchscreens need two. I don’t like tablet security either, because screen contents can get scraped by any well-positioned camera.

  “Farsights would be better, sir!” I say to the walls. Of course there’s no answer, so, flicking Sheridan’s business card into the nearest trash can, I head out the door—and find Elliot waiting for me in the hallway.

  I’m shocked to see him, but the MPs must know he’s here; his presence would have been logged when he walked in the front door of Kelly AMC. “Did you get a court order?” I ask him.

  Elliot gives me a smile and a thumbs-up. “If you’d ever check your email, you’d know that.”

  “Can’t. My overlay’s back on lockdown.”

  Elliot has been around the legal system a long time. He knows how it works, and he uses it to get what he wants, and to go where he wants... and he knows enough never to step over the line—though maybe he’s willing to invite other people to step over. My dad thinks so.

  It’s my dad I have in mind when I say to Elliot, “I know I asked you to come out here, but it was a bad idea.”

  “You getting some pressure?”

  I don’t want to admit it, so I just shrug, but I know that no court order is going to keep the hospital administrator from denying me other visitors if she’s unhappy about Elliot being here.

  “I fixed things,” he assures me. “Really. In exchange for my promise not to file a lawsuit, I get access to you during your rehabilitation—for a human-interest piece on the star of Dark Patrol.”

  “Come on. I told you I don’t want to do an interview.”