The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  At 0100, my map updates. I’m not linked to Guidance, so I assume Kendrick has pushed new orders through. I’m to bear east and south, where I’ll intersect a county road 13.2 kilometers away. Bivouac, it says. Wait for transportation.

  Hallelujah. We won’t have to run all the way to wherever it is we’re going.

  Because Texas is, after all, one hell of a big state.

  ~~~

  One hell of a big state, with a lot of military, both veterans and active duty.

  By the time our LCS has reunited on the roadside, Guidance has somehow hooked up with a local kid who is home on leave after a year in the Sahel. They give him a field promotion to specialist and tell him that he is now operating behind enemy lines, without a uniform. He thinks it’s cool.

  He takes his dad’s 18-wheel cattle truck, does a few experimental slaloms on the narrow road, and gets the wheels to slide sideways, leaving a beautiful skid mark that ends just short of a ditch, while bringing the cab to rest on the opposite shoulder. That’s something we don’t learn in New York City.

  A team of four from our LCS hurries to get one of the back tires unbolted. They settle it at an angle on the axle so it looks like the axle is bent. That’s all the subterfuge we can manage before Kendrick barks at us to scatter.

  I take off south along the road, sprinting hard to my assigned position, 800 meters out. Powered by the dead sister, I make it in three minutes, but my organic parts do not approve. I’m shaking as I throw myself on the ground in the shadow of a thin, scrubby bush. My breath is whooshing so hard that for a few seconds my visor’s ventilation system can’t keep up.

  Several pairs of running footsteps pound down the road in my wake, but one by one they fall silent before reaching me. Only one runner comes all the way. I check the map on my visor and confirm that it’s Ransom. Brush crackles as the bright point marking his existence departs the road, opposite me. The rest of the dual LCS is spread out all the way back to the disabled cattle truck.

  I am so tired I’m not entirely sure I’m going to be able to get up again. The organics hurt, and my nerves are so raw that the feedback from the prosthetics is about to cripple me. Switching from the visor to my overlay, I pull up the neural feedback bar that Joby installed, and I slide it down.

  As the pain eases, I hear in the distance the low rumbling of an approaching truck. Though I knew it was coming, I’m startled anyway and I scramble for the pistol Kendrick gave me to use. It feels small and useless in my hand, but I’m careful with it anyway, keeping it out of the dirt.

  A green light pulses three times in my visor, announcing a direct link to Guidance.

  “Hold position,” Delphi breathes in my ears.

  “Roger that,” I whisper. “Is Guidance hooked in everywhere?”

  “Affirmative. Everyone’s got a good spirit.”

  My lips shape a silent Thank you, which my skullnet picks up and sends.

  Guidance exists to help us avoid fatal mistakes—and tonight, with six rookies and everyone lightheaded from exhaustion, we need all the help we can get—because if there are any errors in this mission, Chicago might get blown up.

  I don’t actually know that there’s a bomb in Chicago. I’m just pretending there is, because in my heart I know the first target of the secessionists is going to be Manhattan, that it has to be Manhattan. Symbols are powerful things, and the city of New York symbolizes unity, diversity, past, future... and a big middle finger flipped at terrorists like the Texas Independence Army.

  The skullnet icon flickers, drawing my focus back to the present and to the growing rumble of the approaching truck. It’s a container truck belonging to the Texas National Guard. Intelligence has been tracking it ever since it was stolen at gunpoint by a turncoat guardsman loyal to the TIA. It’s transporting artillery, which is interesting though not relevant since none of us has ever trained in artillery. We don’t want the truck for its weaponry. We want it because it’s a TIA asset. If we can quietly steal it back, we should be able to ride it a couple hundred miles east without the TIA even noticing that anything’s gone wrong.

  My breathing slows, and my heartbeat settles into a deep, background thud. There’s no way to know how close the truck will get to our fake accident scene before it stops. If the driver is the suspicious type, he might try to turn around as soon as he sees something is wrong. But this is a narrow county road with soft shoulders. Turning around in a big rig might not be possible—and it’s my job to make sure the driver doesn’t have time to try.

  Sound carries remarkably across the flat landscape. Minutes pass as the truck draws near. As I lie on my belly, flat against the ground, I think about Texas scorpions. I imagine them crawling all around me. Or tarantulas.

  “Ready,” Delphi says.

  At the angle my head is turned I can just see the glow of the truck’s headlights rising above the brush.

  I switch to angel sight, so I’m looking down from the drone’s position as it cruises slowly above the road. I watch the oncoming truck pass beneath it. The staged wreck of the cattle truck is visible in the distance, the beams of its headlights shooting past a barbed-wire fence into an empty cattle range. Amber lights outline the cab. The kid is crouched beside the “broken” wheel, but as the headlights of the Guard truck touch him, his skinny figure straightens and he turns, moving his hand up and down to signal to the oncoming truck to slow down.

  Brake lights on the stolen Guard truck blaze in brilliant red, and then the gunning throb of airbrakes washes over me. “Betcha he was half asleep,” I whisper to Delphi.

  She’s too professional to answer.

  The air brakes stop. The truck rolls past me at not more than fifteen miles per hour. Then it stops. It sits there for most of a minute, the engine rumbling. Diesel fumes envelope me.

  The kid starts walking toward the truck. The headlights show him dressed in a thin T-shirt and tight jeans. Anyone can see there’s no weapon on him. He’s not a threat.

  Still, there’s no sign of any activity in the cab. Unless the driver has a satellite phone—not very likely—he’s on his own trying to figure out what to do. “Delphi, he’s going to come out guns blazing. Command can’t sacrifice that kid.”

  The kid stops. He’s still over fifty meters away.

  “Get ready, Shelley,” Delphi says. My angel sight goes away, leaving nothing to distract me.

  My position is behind the cab, in the dark beyond the road. I get my feet under me. Crouched, waiting, I pass the pistol to my left hand.

  The cab’s window rolls open, an elbow sticks out, and a tentative voice calls, “Howdy!”

  “Howdy, sir!” the kid answers with perfect midnight innocence. “You got a truck jack, sir?”

  “Geez, son,” the driver whines. “You don’t carry your own jack?”

  Delphi says, “Go, Shelley.”

  I go, using all the augmented power I have. My first leap takes me to the edge of the pavement. The driver hears the impact of my footplates. He turns to look, forgetting to use the mirror. I’m already in motion.

  My second jump puts me on the running board, beside the window which is rapidly closing. The driver is so startled by my sudden proximity that he throws himself sideways across the seat, leaving the window only half closed. I try the door handle, just in case, but it’s locked, so I shove my gun hand through the remaining gap in the window, while grabbing the steel loop of an outside grip with my other hand to keep from falling down.

  The driver is still sprawled across the seat, but he decides to fight back, bringing his booted foot up and aiming a vicious kick at my gun hand.

  I’ve got the pistol aimed at his face. I could kill him easily, but Kendrick said I’m not supposed to; I’m not supposed to break the window either. We want the truck to show no sign of damage. I yank my hand back.

  “You kill me and you’re blowing up New York,” he screams.

  I knew it.

  Fuckwad.

  Delphi says, “Reach down and
to your left. Along the armrest. Hit all of those buttons. One’s the power lock.”

  “Can’t. Gun’s in my hand.”

  I reach through anyway. The driver tries again to kick me. This time I hit his shin hard with the gun barrel. I can’t get much of a swing, but the impact is solid. He gasps, and for a few seconds he’s frozen in pain.

  Ransom breaks in over gen-com: “L. T., you need help with that door?”

  “Get up here!”

  He lunges onto the running board, huge in his dead sister. I can’t see through his black visor, but I imagine him grinning.

  I’m not.

  “Get the door unlocked! I don’t want blood in our new truck.”

  “Yes, sir!” He reaches through the open window, groping for the power lock.

  I hear a click and pivot away from the door so Ransom can get it open. I’m still holding the steel loop of the handgrip as I swing around, but I’ve made a novice mistake. If I’d grabbed the loop with my dead sister’s arm hook, my rig would take the weight, but now it’s my right arm that has to hold everything up: my body weight, plus an eighty-pound pack, and the weight of my dead sister. I groan. My shoulder is close to separating as the door swings open, so I am not in a good mood as I hurl myself into the cab.

  My temper doesn’t improve when I see the driver has pulled a pistol that he’s bringing to bear on me. Using the butt of my own gun, I hammer him in the crotch, eliciting a scream that cuts off sharply when the pain closes up his throat. His weapon tumbles to the floor. Using my arm hook, I grab him by the belt and haul him with me as I back out of the cab. Ransom catches him before he can tumble to the pavement.

  ~~~

  “Goddamnit, Shelley!” Kendrick shouts. I can’t see his face past the black screen of his visor, but I get to hear his voice twice: both live and over gen-com. “I told you to take it easy!”

  We’re both looking down at the driver—Guidance says his name is Troy Butler—curled on the pavement in a fetal position, moaning and clutching his crotch.

  A mishmash of voices is in my ears as my helmet collects all the solo links between squad members and plays them for me at low volume. I hear Sergeant Nolan and Specialist Tuttle, working to get the cattle truck put back together; and I hear Sergeant Vasquez and Specialist Harvey, doing an inventory of the weapons carried in the back of the hijacked National Guard truck. They speak in clipped phrases because we’re in a hurry. We are scheduled to roll in seven minutes, but Kendrick wants to interrogate the prisoner.

  I still have the colonel’s pistol, so I use it to gesture at Troy Butler as he quivers on the ground. “Sir, you just said not to kill him—and he’s not dead.”

  Kendrick looks up at me. I can’t see any hint of expression in the empty field of his black visor, but I have a good imagination. “Did I need to add, ‘Don’t emasculate him?’ I thought that might be assumed.”

  “I didn’t cut anything off. He’s just a drama queen.” I reach down and grab good old Troy by his arm. “Get the fuck up, cracker, before I shove this pistol up your ass.”

  Reality slips. Did I just say that? I let go of Troy’s arm and step back, certain that someone I don’t know just slipped inside my soul.

  “Damn it, Delphi,” I whisper. “What are you juicing me on?”

  “Whatever it is, Delphi,” Kendrick says, “back it off a couple of notches.”

  Eight hundred meters down the road, the engine revs on the cattle truck and Sergeant Nolan shouts directions.

  Kendrick nudges Troy Butler with the toe of his boot. “I advise you to get up now, Pfc. Butler, because we are all tired and cranky, and it would be really easy for my juiced-up L. T. to make a body disappear out here in the ass-end of nowhere.”

  Threats never sound hollow when Kendrick makes them. Troy Butler foregoes groaning on the asphalt and, pulling himself together, he manages to struggle to his feet. He is not in uniform, but he is a National Guardsman. He picks that moment to remember the fact. Straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders, he turns to Kendrick and salutes. “Private First Class Troy Butler, reporting for duty, sir.”

  Kendrick crosses his arms over his chest. “About fucking time.”

  I consider raising the pistol and bringing it down on the back of Troy’s turncoat skull, but Delphi is riding me, and she whispers, “Chill.”

  “Lieutenant Shelley,” Kendrick says, “I think it’s best if I have my gun back now.”

  “Give it to him, Shelley,” Delphi warns.

  “Stop nagging me,” I whisper between clenched teeth—but I step around Troy and return the pistol to Kendrick. Down the road, the cattle truck is slowly straightening, its taillights blazing as it begins to roll away.

  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 L. T.’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 onscreen 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 sist
ers, 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, L. T.?”

  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 nightvision’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.”