The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  We both jerk awake as Colonel Rawlings speaks on gen-com. “Shelley, Flynn. We’ve come to the tricky part.”

  I check our position: we’re off the northwest coast of Africa—which means it’s time to refuel. We knew from the start we couldn’t make it all the way without a stopover, but to protect the secrecy of our initial operation, the mission plan called for our landing site to be negotiated with a host country after we were in the air. “Jaynie,” I say over gen-com. “Bring Ilima back up here. We’re going to need her to land this plane.”

  “Negative,” Rawlings says. “There will be no landing. It’s too risky regardless of promises of safe passage. We’ve arranged for a tanker to meet you. Scheduled rendezvous in eleven minutes.”

  I’m alert enough to know this isn’t good news. “Sir! Those fighters aren’t going to let us rendezvous with a tanker.” I peer out into a star-filled night, looking for our escort, but right now they’re not in sight.

  “I think they will. Any interference on their part and your plane could blow up, along with the tanker. We’re betting they’re not going to take that risk.”

  If he intends this as comforting, it misses the mark. Flynn looks at me through the transparent shield of her visor. I can’t think of anything reassuring to tell her.

  “You copy me, Shelley?”

  “Yes, I do, sir.”

  “This is our only option.”

  “Understood.”

  ~~~

  Jaynie fulfills my original order, sending Ilima back up to the cockpit. I decide to let her stay. Leaving Flynn where she is, in the pilot’s chair, I yield the copilot seat to Ilima, handing her my headset. She scans the instrument panel, notes the level of our remaining fuel, and turns to me with a waxen face and pleading eyes, speaking words I can barely hear—but I can read her lips: Lieutenant Shelley, we have to land.

  I gesture to her, palm out, asking her to wait. I need a headset.

  In the seat behind Flynn, Tuttle is wide awake, watching me with worried eyes. I don’t want to send him downstairs—I like having him at my back—so I turn instead to our accomplice, Perez. He’s done a good job of playing the frightened hostage. Even now. He’s hunched over, rocking slightly in his seat, avoiding my gaze.

  “Jaynie?”

  “Here.”

  “Perez is coming down. See that he’s confined.”

  He cringes when I tap his shoulder, but when I give him the signal to go, he’s eager, slipping off his headset and rushing the ladder.

  I take over his seat and his headset, then I use the intercom to explain to Ilima about the tanker, adding, “If there’s a problem, if we can’t pull it off, you’ll need to have some place lined up where we can land.”

  “Give me a minute... okay, we have enough fuel to make Cape Verde.”

  I remember seeing that name on the navigation maps. I check my encyclopedia and confirm it’s a group of islands off the African coast, between fourteen degrees and eighteen degrees north latitude. “Cape Verde is good. But don’t change the heading until I tell you.”

  “Lieutenant,” she pleads, “you don’t understand. We don’t have fuel for maneuvers. Our margin is minimal. We need to adjust heading now.”

  “Not until I tell you.”

  I check the time. Four minutes until the tanker is due. I shut off the intercom so Ilima can’t hear. “Rawlings. Status?”

  “Stand by.”

  We wait.

  A minute passes, and then another. I open a solo link to Rawlings. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Stand by.”

  I get up again, standing just behind Ilima. She tried before to change our heading on her own. If she’s scared enough, she’ll do it again and I’ll need to stop her—though this time I’m not so sure I want to.

  I search the night sky for the lights of the tanker.

  Tuttle says, “It’s been eleven minutes.”

  My heart thuds, each beat a painful strike against the bruises on my chest. My spine hurts too, so I give in and drag the feedback bar lower, but not by much. I don’t want to lose track of my feet.

  “L. T.?” Flynn asks on gen-com. “What do we do?”

  Ilima’s hand darts for the instrument panel. I don’t know what she’s planning, and I don’t wait to find out. I catch her wrist and twist it back. “Rawlings? Where is the tanker?”

  Several seconds pass without answer—which tells me the tanker isn’t coming. I release Ilima’s wrist, and over the intercom I tell her. “Adjust our heading.”

  “Do not adjust heading!” Rawlings barks on gen-com. “You are not going to land.”

  I signal Ilima to wait, and ask Rawlings again, “Where is our tanker?”

  “On the way. It was delayed. Rendezvous is rescheduled. Estimated time, twenty-two minutes.”

  Twenty-two minutes sounds like forever. After twenty-two minutes, we’ll have no margin at all. “What happened, Rawlings?”

  “Someone leaked. The tanker delayed takeoff to allow time for an accompanying passenger jet. It’s transporting a pool of mediots, Lieutenant, armed with video cameras. In other words, witnesses.”

  Witnesses to what? Our deaths, when our plane runs out of fuel?

  Another ten minutes pass, and then the proximity alarm goes off, announcing the return of the two fighters. They slide in from above, moving ahead to occupy the airspace required by the tanker. “Rawlings, are you looking at this?” He can see exactly what I see in the feed from my overlay. “They are not going to let us refuel.”

  “You are not going to land, Lieutenant Shelley.”

  I don’t answer. There’s no need. We’re not martyrs. Rawlings has to know that if it’s a choice between landing and running out of fuel, we will land.

  A few minutes later, Flynn spots the distant lights of the tanker. “There, sir!” The lights of the media plane flash behind it. We move quickly toward rendezvous—but the fighters hold their position.

  Ilima looks up at me. “This is not going to work,” she says on the intercom. “We need to land.”

  “Continue on,” Rawlings says.

  I argue with him. “Sir, there is no margin—”

  “I know that, Lieutenant. So does our enemy. So does everyone on the media plane. Don’t give in. They will let you refuel, if you leave them no choice.”

  He’s so sure of himself, but he’s not here. I want to override his order. I know I should override his order for the sake of everyone on this plane... but I don’t want to give up on the mission.

  “We have to go now,” Ilima pleads.

  Flynn feels the same way. She turns her big eyes on me. “Lieutenant Shelley?”

  I lift my gaze to look again out the window at the lights of the fighters. They’re holding their positions. I watch them for another twenty or thirty seconds. I do not believe they will let us refuel. I’m on the verge of telling Ilima to change our destination to Cape Verde when the skullnet icon flickers. It brings with it a sense of certainty and suddenly I know—I just know—that Rawlings is right. “Hold steady,” I say, using the intercom and gen-com, so everyone can hear. “We’ll be okay. Just a few more seconds and they’re going to leave.”

  Twenty seconds later, both fighters break off and retreat. It’s like a magic act.

  “Oh my God,” Ilima whispers.

  “L. T.,” Flynn says, astonishment in her voice, “how did you know... ?”

  “I didn’t know. I just had a feeling.” A premonition whispered into my back brain, a certain knowledge of what was ahead. On patrol at Dassari I learned to trust that feeling. I still trust it, and why shouldn’t I? Episode three isn’t over yet.

  The tanker lines up against a background of stars. Flynn gets instructions on how to open the refueling receptacle. Ilima watches her, confirming every move. And we load up.

  Flashing pinpoints of light put the position of the fighters far to the west. They’ve stayed close to us for most of our journey, so when the tanker leaves I look for them to cl
ose in again, but they don’t. They keep their distance. It’s the media plane that flies beside us now, its navigation lights bright off of our east wing.

  “Status, L. T.?” Jaynie asks over gen-com. “Are we okay?”

  I smile. We’re 350 miles off the coast of western Africa, with enough fuel to go all the way to the city of Niamey, where Ahab Matugo waits to take custody of our prisoner. “We’re good. Everything’s good. We’re going to make it.”

  Harvey’s voice rings out over gen-com: “Hoo-yah!”

  Nolan echoes her, but as Moon joins in, the cockpit radio wakes up. A new voice comes in over the headset—a man with an American accent, but not the fighter pilot who spoke to us before. With the cheering going on I can’t make out what he’s saying, so I drop out of gen-com, picking up his communication as he repeats our call sign. “. . . 8-7-Z. Vanda-Sheridan Globemaster 8-7-Z. Lieutenant James Shelley... are you in command now?”

  Tuttle and Ilima are wearing cockpit headsets, so they’ve heard the transmission. So has Rawlings, because he’s following my feed. He opens a solo link. “Don’t answer that, Shelley.”

  I don’t intend to. But I ask him, “Who is that? You know, don’t you?”

  “It’s not relevant to the mission.”

  “Of course it’s relevant. He knows my name.” No one should know who we are. We are anonymous. That’s why I made Perez talk for us on the radio; it’s why I’ve only spoken to Rawlings on the encrypted connection relayed by the angel. I’ve talked on the plane’s intercom, but that isn’t broadcast. “He knows something happened to Kendrick.”

  “Let it go.”

  The stranger speaks again on the radio. “Lieutenant Shelley, I believe Mr. Lucius Perez came aboard your plane in possession of a phone. Why don’t you get that, and turn it on?”

  I know the phone he means. Nolan brought it to me after he searched Perez. My hand slides into my pocket. I find the phone and pull it out.

  “Do not turn that phone on,” Rawlings warns. “It’s a security breach. The signal can be used to track your location.”

  “A media plane is following us,” I point out. “Our position is not secret.” I turn the phone over, examining it. “Who is he, Rawlings? Why does he know my name?”

  “Your only concern is to finish the mission.”

  If Rawlings won’t give me answers, I’ll find out for myself.

  I turn the phone on. It boots in a second-and-a-half. In another second, it’s ringing. I push back one side of the headset, tap to answer, and hold the phone to my ear. I don’t say anything.

  “Shelley?” a woman’s voice asks, trembling, tentative. “Shelley, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  It’s Lissa.

  My heart rate spikes. Fear rushes through me, faster than the skullnet can counter. “Lissa? Where are you?”

  “You can’t do anything for her,” Rawlings says. He’s monitoring my feed, so he can hear what I hear, including her voice on the phone—but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to him. I drop the solo link.

  “Lissa?”

  She doesn’t answer. Instead, I hear the voice that was on the radio. “You’ve had a nice run, Shelley, but it’s over now.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t need my name. You only need to know that I’ve been hired to recover Thelma Sheridan. I trust she’s still alive?”

  A merc.

  Tuttle eyes me from the seat behind Flynn. His lips are moving. I can’t hear him because I’m not on gen-com, but I know he’s relaying to the LCS what he thinks is going on. When he starts to get up, I signal him to stay put, and then I return my attention to the merc. “Sheridan is alive,” I assure him. “Where is Lissa?”

  “Lissa’s with me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Look out your windshield. You’ll see us out there.”

  I lean on the seatbacks and peer into the night, but Ilima is first to spot the lights of a new aircraft, far ahead of us. “Someone else out there,” she says on the intercom.

  “It could be anyone,” I object.

  The merc says, “Tell him, sweetheart.”

  “Shelley? I’m so sorry. We thought we were safe, but they broke in. They shot Keith—Major Chen—I don’t know if he’s alive—”

  “Shh, shh, darling,” the merc says in a soothing, fatherly tone. “Just tell him what he needs to know.”

  I faked my death to keep Lissa safe, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t fool anyone.

  My senses are supercharged with fear, with dread. When I sense movement behind me, I whip around. Jaynie has come into the cockpit. I don’t have time for her. I turn my back and look again out the window.

  “Shelley?” Lissa asks.

  “Tell me, baby.”

  “They want you to land in Cape Verde.”

  Thanks to our fuel fiasco, I’m familiar with Cape Verde.

  “We’ll circle around,” Lissa says in whispered syllables boosted in volume by the phone. “Come in behind you.”

  The merc takes over again. “A nice, peaceful exchange of ladies, you understand, Lieutenant Shelley?”

  No. I don’t understand. That inner feeling that I’ve come to trust is telling me to delay. Delay, delay, put off any resolution for as long as I can, even though in my rational mind I know nothing can be gained by delay. If I don’t cooperate, Lissa will die.

  The merc asks, “You are listening to me, Shelley?” At the same time, a familiar icon wakes up in my overlay as Rawlings switches me back into gen-com. “Lieutenant Shelley,” he says, “you will answer me.”

  I answer them both: “I’m listening.”

  Rawlings first: “You can’t do anything for her. Terminate the contact and continue the mission.”

  The merc can’t hear him, thank God. “I’ll need your cooperation, Shelley, if you want to see pretty Lissa again.”

  I stare out the windshield and wonder, What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  The skullnet icon flickers, and I feel it more profoundly: Delay.

  I turn away from the lights of the distant aircraft to find myself facing Jaynie. Beneath her skullcap her gaze is wary, worried, when what I need from her is trust. “Sergeant,” I say, still holding the phone to my ear, “we’ve got a situation.”

  Her voice is crisp, official, coming over gen-com. “Colonel Rawlings has informed me of the situation, sir. I am to remind you that the mission comes first.”

  The mission comes first. I know that. We don’t negotiate with terrorists—but I am not going to abandon Lissa. I can’t.

  The merc doesn’t like what he’s hearing. “What the fuck are you doing, Shelley?” he shouts in my ear. “Do you give a shit about Lissa or not?” Without waiting for an answer, he hits her, making sure I can hear it: the smack of his hand, her scream of shock and pain; and the sobbing, choking prayer that follows, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  My skin crawls, listening to it. I try not to imagine what else he could do to her, will do. I want to get my hands on him. I want to be wearing the dead sister so I can get my arm hooks on him, and tear him apart, but he might as well be in another dimension, another world, because there’s no way I can reach him.

  “Vasquez,” Rawlings says, “take the phone.”

  She glances at Tuttle. I eye them both, giving a negative shake of my head, and a warning, Don’t try it. The skullnet picks up the thought, translates it to voice, and sends it to gen-com. The merc can’t hear it, but Jaynie can.

  She drops her chin, glaring at me, but she holds back, and gestures at Tuttle to do the same. On the phone, the merc tells me, “Shelley, I need your cooperation.”

  “I understand. You don’t have to hurt her.”

  I hear Lissa sobbing in the background as she apologizes over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Not once asking me to save her life. My Lissa... She’s analyzed the situation, and she doesn’t believe I can.

  The merc says, “Lissa will be fine, if you change your heading now
.”

  Delay.

  I switch on the intercom. “Ilima.” Her chin snaps up. She looks at me from the copilot’s seat, wide-eyed. I worry she’s on the verge of meltdown, so I try hard to keep my voice calm. “I need you to recalculate our heading. Figure out an adjustment to get to Cape Verde.”

  I look up at Jaynie, I look straight into her eyes, and I think, Tell her do it slowly. Delay. My skullnet picks up my intent and translates to gen-com.

  But my changing demands have confused poor Ilima. “Cape Verde?” she asks me.

  My gaze is still fixed on Jaynie when I say aloud, “Just do it.”

  Jaynie is scowling. Her lip curls in frustration. Her questioning gaze demands to know: What the fuck are you doing, sir? Is this some brilliant plan to save the day?

  No, I don’t have any fucking plan, only delay, delay, waiting for what, I don’t know, a lightning bolt from God maybe, to set the world right, because I can’t see a solution as things stand. If I land at Cape Verde I betray the mission along with my soldiers’ lives, their futures, their honor, their resolve. If I don’t land there, I condemn Lissa to torture, terror, and death.

  Delay.

  Jaynie makes up her mind. Moving quickly, she commandeers Tuttle’s headset, then speaks over the intercom to Ilima, while I shield the phone with my hand to make sure the merc can’t hear her. “Do it slowly, Ilima,” she instructs. “Take as long as you can—and don’t enter the heading without specific instruction.”

  Ilima’s perplexed gaze moves from Jaynie to me. When I give her a reassuring nod, she reaches for the instrument panel. “It’s a fast process,” she cautions me.

  I guess so, because the merc is already suspicious. “You’re bullshitting me, Shelley.”

  “My pilot is working out the route.”

  “Lissa’s not worth it to you, is she? Poor Lissa.” His voice softens, becomes distant and tinny as he turns away from the phone. “Your Jimmy doesn’t love you as much as we thought. Maybe it’s the wiring that gives him a stone-cold heart.”

  I think, Don’t believe him. But I can’t send the thought to Lissa. Briefly, I close my eyes, trading a view of the cockpit for a display of half-hidden icons and one fully aglow, the skullnet icon, recording the maintenance of my steady, rational mind.