The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  “Fuck! I was not—”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  I school myself not to take a swing.

  “You can bullshit yourself,” he says, “but don’t bullshit me. You chose to stay in-service. What kind of jackass would do that just to avoid one year in minimum security? You’re tough. You could have done the time and lived off your daddy’s bank account the rest of your life. But you chose to stay in, because you’re army. Even if you can never admit it to yourself, this is where you belong, it’s your role. The bullshit hero of your own story.”

  “With all due respect, sir, fuck you.”

  “The best way to fuck me is to fail out of this program. You are the prototype. Your performance directly affects my future, the future of this program, and the future of every other soldier eager to have the same benefit you’ve been given.”

  He makes it sound like a good thing, but I can see where this is going. “It’s a benefit we get only if we stay in the army. This program is just a way for you to recycle experienced soldiers and send them back into action.”

  Kendrick doesn’t even flinch. “That is correct.”

  Chen reminds us he’s there by pulling out a chair, and sitting down again. He speaks in the sort of frank voice appropriate for relating the cold, hard facts of the world to an overwrought teenager. “It’s the nature of research budgets and funding. It costs upward of a quarter-million dollars to draft, evaluate, and train a typical combat soldier, and half of them wash out along the way. That same amount of money can be invested in putting a known quantity, an experienced warrior, back into action. And if that warrior gets killed?” He shrugs. “There’s a one-time payout on the life insurance, and no additional healthcare expenses down the road.”

  Kendrick closes the aluminum case. “Let’s make it simple. The cyborg research does not happen unless it gives us an advantage in combat. Getting trained and experienced soldiers back into the field is an advantage. Are you clear on that, Shelley?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  “And are you going to fuck up this program?”

  I want to tell him yes. Yes, I am going to fuck up your program because I’m tired of you and people like you, fucking with me. But I can’t say it. The words stick in my throat because they’re a lie. If I fail out of this program, then I fail out of the army... and who would I be then? Where would I fit in?

  It’s not that I like it in the army. It’s just... what I know.

  “Lieutenant?” Kendrick presses. “I did not hear your answer.”

  I square my shoulders and tell him the truth. “It is not my intention to fuck up your program, sir.”

  He nods. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. You would not want me for an enemy, son.”

  That’s something I have no trouble believing.

  ~~~

  The below-knee assemblies of my robot legs can be switched out in just a few seconds, but Dr. Masoud warned me that replacing a complete leg would be more complicated. I’m a little nervous about the process; more so, after I meet the technician. She’s a soft, short civilian—no taller than Flynn, though quite a bit heavier—dressed in an army-green T-shirt and khaki pants, who displays an adversarial relationship to her work.

  “Goddamn you toxic little bitch,” she whispers as one of the bolts holding my left leg in place resists her efforts to remove it.

  I’m lying in a reclined dentist’s chair, staring at the ceiling and waiting for her declaration of victory which comes in just a few seconds.

  “Got you, you dipshit. Who’s next?”

  This is the third bolt that has dared to challenge her, so I’m getting used to her ongoing narrative.

  “You going to come out easy? There we go, you little tease. You’re the last one.”

  She drops the final bolt into a steel dish with all the others. I lift my head, sitting up a little so I can watch as she slides the leg off.

  The top of the leg is a hollow post that fits like a sleeve over the post protruding from my truncated thigh. The titanium pieces separate, revealing several colorful bundles of incredibly fine-gauge wire still connecting the two parts. She pinches the separate strands together and then tugs at them gently—“Come on out, you pretty little pains-in-the-ass”—until she exposes a set of plug-in connections. “No more lovey-dovey. Sugar daddy’s getting a younger bitch.”

  She frowns. Then she looks up at me with bright brown eyes. “You know that override Joby gave you, to adjust feedback from the prosthetics? It might be a good idea right about now to slide that bar all the way down to zero.”

  I feel no inclination to argue with this advice. I use my gaze to adjust the bar, eliminating all sensation from my legs. “Done.”

  She pops the first connection, then gives me a questioning look. I shrug, because I don’t feel a thing. “Good,” she says.

  In a few seconds she’s got them all separated. She sets aside the detached leg, gets out the new one, slips a finger into the top of its hollow shaft, and pulls out more strands of brightly colored cable, each with a tiny socket on the end.

  “Those look awfully fragile.”

  “Shit, yeah,” she agrees. “They’re fragile, fussy little sluts.” She lays out the new leg at the foot of the chair, then gets to work connecting the cables to the ones trailing out of my leg, matching up different colored sockets. “In, you little shit. Gotcha. In, you little shit...”

  “So if any of those connections come loose, I’m toast, right?”

  She stops what’s she’s doing to glare at me with narrowed eyes. “There’s built-in redundancy.” Her gaze returns to her work. “In, you shit. In . . .” until the last one is connected.

  As she pushes the tiny cables up into the hollow post she asks me, “You worried?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I wired your first set of legs and that held up. This one will too. And if it doesn’t, send your ghost back to let me know.”

  “I bet you and Joby get along real well.”

  “Yeah,” she says with sarcastic dreaminess. “He loves me. So long as I never, ever, ever make a mistake. His last three techs couldn’t quite live up to that standard.”

  She replaces the bolts, and then sets to work on the other leg. When I finally get put back together, I crank up the feedback, hoping for something a little more pleasant than the low-level pain I’ve gotten used to, but the sensation is exactly the same. “You sure there’s anything different about this new set up?”

  She gives me a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll tell Joby you asked. But trust me on this—you’ve been upgraded.”

  ~~~

  The reinforcements roll in at 1045 the next morning in two monstrous SUVs. I’ve seen the personnel lists, so I know what to expect. They don’t. I’m standing with Major Chen, Colonel Kendrick, and Sergeant Nolan as the new arrivals pile out of the vehicles: seven LCS combat veterans and three rookies. With the six LCS soldiers already present at C-FHEIT, we now have enough personnel to fully staff two linked combat squads.

  I haven’t been in charge of a full squad since training. I’m looking forward to it.

  The new sergeant takes charge, “Retrieve your equipment and form up!”

  I can’t help smiling. Sergeant Jaynie Vasquez has a kickass command voice. In less than a minute she gets her soldiers in line, standing at attention before us, with their duffel bags on their backs, HITRs on their shoulders, and at their feet, the folded exoskeletons of their dead sisters. The combat veterans wear a skullcap beneath the billed cap of their regular uniform.

  Jaynie turns to present her credentials to us, the officers at C-FHEIT. Her eyes get big when she spots me. I swear she stops breathing as her gaze drops to my legs. I’m wearing my combat uniform, but not boots. Her gaze lingers on my gray titanium feet and then she looks up with accusing eyes. “Sergeant Jayne Vasquez, reporting for duty, sirs.”

  At one end of the line is Matt Ransom, staring at me as if he’s not entirely sure I am who I am.

 
; Colonel Kendrick gives a short welcoming speech which no one listens to, and then he dismisses the new arrivals so they can get checked in at the barracks. Jaynie approaches me, a suspicious glint in her eyes.

  “Thought you’d be a civilian by now, sir.”

  “I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. It’s good to see you, Jaynie.”

  Her expression is somber. She glances over her shoulder at Ransom. “I wondered why they kept us together.” Her gaze returns to me. “Is it going to be episode two? Dark Patrol all over again?”

  I had the same thought when I saw her name and Matt Ransom’s on the personnel list. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” And because I know she’s telling herself the wrong story, I add, “I didn’t know anything about Dark Patrol, Jaynie. I would have told you if I did.”

  “Yes, sir.” There’s doubt in her eyes. “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not wearing a skullcap.”

  She’s not asking about my legs, because she knows what really matters. I tap my head and tell her, “I’ve leveled-up. The system’s embedded. It’s part of me now.”

  She ponders this, but if she has an opinion, she keeps it to herself. “Congratulations, sir. It must be reassuring to be locked in.” She salutes, then retrieves the folded bones of her dead sister and heads off to supervise her soldiers.

  I can guess what’s going through Jaynie’s head. It’s not just the fact of the stupid reality show intruding on our lives. It’s the knowledge that in the next episode the conflict is sure to be cranked up. I don’t know where our next assignment will be, but it will probably be a more dangerous one than Fort Dassari—and what are the odds that all three of us will survive?

  Ransom doesn’t share our grim thoughts. When Jaynie cuts him loose he’s all over me. “Jesus, L. T., I thought you were finished, I thought you’d get sent home. Goddamn, it’s good to see you, and shit, those are the coolest feet!”

  “Yeah? Check this out.”

  I show him how the feet bend. He watches in fascination, with none of the initial skittishness the other enlisted showed. “That is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Knee joint’s pretty cool too. Ransom, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. You saved my life. I want to thank you for that.”

  He shakes his head. “That was the worst day ever, but I should have known God would see you through. He’s got you halfway to bulletproof, now.”

  ~~~

  We train together for the next three weeks, moving from conditioning exercises to drills to field exercises designed to test our unit cohesion and my ability to handle not just one LCS, but two. Kendrick calls the combined units a “dual LCS.” Sixteen soldiers working as a single unit. Sometimes he’s with us in the field, rigged in armor and bones; but just as often he leaves it all to me. It works only because Kendrick hand-selected top personnel. Jaynie and Nolan are both talented and experienced non-coms who back me up and let me know when I’m screwing up, while the soldiers they supervise are enthusiastic and interested, with rookies who are eager to learn.

  It’s been fun.

  But it’s also been a long six weeks, physically and mentally challenging, and shadowed with questions that so far refuse to be answered.

  Kendrick says we are here to prove the value of my cyborg enhancements and no doubt that is true. But simple proof of my field qualifications does not require the elite team I’ve been given and I can’t help believing that we are training for something specific and imminent—though we’ve received no orders yet.

  Guidance has been involved in most of our field exercises with Pagan as my handler. Every time he comes online I question him on the rogue program—what he’s been told, what he’s heard. I’ve repeated for him Thelma Sheridan’s portentous words—the red stain that bleeds through everything—and in our brief conversations those words transmogrify into “the Red”—our name for the unknown. “Have you heard from the Red, Shelley?” he’ll ask me, and I’ll tell him no. There have been new security regimes, new encryption, and I’ve had no incursions into my brain space, not since the skullnet was installed. I want to believe Guidance has learned how to lock the Red out of my head, but Guidance hasn’t made that claim. Maybe they just don’t know for sure. No proving a negative, after all. But it weighs on me, not knowing.

  Then there’s the question of Lissa. In three days I get to escape from C-FHEIT. I’m authorized for two weeks of leave—but in all the time I’ve been here I haven’t talked to Lissa, or traded emails, and I have no idea if we’ll be spending the next two weeks together. I have no idea if she’ll be willing to see me again.

  I put it out of my mind. Tonight we’re playing a war game. It’s a graduation exercise that will be observed by VIPs both in and out of the army, who will decide what level of funding to award the cyborg program.

  It’s 0130. I stand at attention with my dual LCS on the edge of the quad. We’re rigged in armor, bones, and field packs, our helmets on, visors opaque, fully linked to each other and to Guidance. We appear ready for battle, but we’re carrying non-lethal stinging rounds for ammunition—a big bang but not much substance—while our exoskeletons all have a kill box attached, to cut off power and drop us to the ground if our AI overseer decides we are dead.

  We watch as a transport helicopter lands on the quad. Our helmets mute its roar, but we have to brace against the blast of its rotors as it sets down in front of us. The side door opens, steps unfold, and twelve men and women, all in civilian clothing, step out: contractors, news writers, and army officials.

  Colonel Kendrick and Major Chen stand ready to greet them. Both are dressed in combat uniforms, but neither is rigged for the field and they don’t wear helmets. They present our human face, shaking hands with our guests and then directing them to stand on the side. Farsights blink with green recording lights and tablets image us: seventeen faceless troops of C-FHEIT’s elite dual LCS.

  I’m focused on my soldiers, not on the visitors, but my overlay notices him, and pops up an identity balloon: Elliot Weber. I shift my eyes without turning my head, and see him shaking hands with Colonel Kendrick. Elliot was going to do an article on my rehabilitation. Was he granted a seat on the helicopter just so he could follow up? It seems incredible, and I have an uneasy suspicion he’s heard a rumor of the Red.

  No time to worry about it.

  Colonel Kendrick is wearing an audio-loop that hooks him into gen-com. “Start-ex,” he says. “Lieutenant, initiate the operation.”

  “Roger that. Moving out.”

  My dual LCS boards the waiting helicopter without another word spoken. To the observers, we must appear to be a squad of faceless automatons, flawlessly running on an internal program.

  ~~~

  The helicopter lifts off. We’re in the air eleven and a half minutes before we’re dropped off in the Great Dark of Nowhere. I scan the terrain in nightvision. It’s flat, like just about everything around here. There’s knee-high dry grass and just a few small, scattered trees. The sky is clear, full of stars, but nightvision strips their beauty away. The air smells of exhaust from the helicopter and dry grass. There’s hardly any wind.

  As the helicopter leaves, a map comes up on my visor. My LCS is pinpointed on the map’s periphery. At its center is our target, which bears the label “Enemy Black Ops Lab,” a short 11K away. From our initial briefing, I know our target is a mockup of a mobile bioweapons lab, covered with camo netting and nestled in a dry wash near a bluff that stands thirty meters above the surrounding land.

  Kendrick is still at C-FHEIT, but he speaks to us over gen-com, reiterating the mission. “Get there. Eliminate the enemy. Retrieve all data and samples from the lab and get back here in time for breakfast.”

  Breakfast is 0530.

  “What’s the current intel on the enemy, sir?”

  “Defensive manpower estimated between ten and twenty. Standard small arms, shoulder-launched missiles, and RPG. No tanks in the vicinity, but armored trans
ports are possible.”

  “Drones, sir?”

  “Unknown. But if you see any, take ’em out.”

  “Will do.”

  This is not going to be a live fire exercise, just a round of intense laser tag, though Kendrick is sure to find some way to shake it up.

  I walk the line one more time, examining my soldiers. We look alike except for height. With the armor, it’s even hard to tell the men from the women, but my visor tags each soldier with a name so I know who’s who. Ten are combat veterans, six are rookies, but every one of them is a highly rated soldier.

  “This is a stealth mission,” I remind them. “We stay quiet until we hit the outlying sensors. Then we move in fast and hard.”

  It bothers me that I have no idea who the enemy is. All I know is that they’re not going to be soldiers from C-FHEIT, because we are it.

  “Listen to your handlers. Know the positions of your LCS, but don’t succumb to tunnel vision. Be aware at all times of what’s going on around you.” I turn to Jaynie. “Sergeant Vasquez? Move us out.”

  “Single line!” Jaynie snaps. “Form up!”

  Jaynie’s on point. The LCS falls into place behind her. We’ll be going single file to reduce our profile. I take a position three back while Sergeant Nolan sweeps.

  We move out at a fast clip, loping through the dry grass, the powered legs of the dead sisters letting us run better than eight-minute miles without trying too hard, while carrying the weight of our packs, our armor, and our arms. The angel is ahead of us, flying high to make it safe from ground-based fire.

  We’ve put eight klicks behind us, and the grass is giving way to more frequent groves of small, thorny trees, when Pagan checks in.