The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  The general in the background – from NDHQ in Ottawa, Becker gathered, although there’d been no formal introduction – studied the tacpad in his hand and said nothing at all.

  She shook her head. “There aren’t any fish. Every reef in the WTP’s been acidified for twenty years.”

  “It’s definitely a point we’ll be making,” Eisbach said. “You can’t fault the system for not recognizing profiles that aren’t even supposed to exist in the zone.”

  “But how could they be –”

  “Tradition, maybe.” The PAO shrugged. “Some kind of cultural thing. We’re checking with the local NGOs but so far none of them are accepting responsibility. Whatever they were doing, the UN never white-listed it.”

  “They didn’t show on approach,” Becker remembered. “No visual, no sound – I mean, how could a couple of boats just sneak up like that? It had to be some kind of stealth tech, that must be what Wingman keyed – I mean, they were just there.” Why was this so hard? The augs were supposed keep her balanced, mix up just the right cocktail to keep her cool and crisp under the most lethal conditions.

  Of course, the augs were also supposed to know unarmed civilians when they saw them… The JAG was nodding. “Your mechanic. Specialist, uh…”

  “Blanch.” From the room’s only civilian, standing unobtrusively with the potted plants. Becker glanced over; he flashed her a brief and practiced smile.

  “Specialist Blanch, yes. He suspects there was a systems failure of some kind.”

  “I would never have fired if –” Meaning, of course, I would never have fired.

  Don’t be such a pussy, Becker. Last month you took on a Kuan-Zhan with zero cover and zero backup, never even broke a sweat. Least you can do now is stand next to a fucking philodendron without going to pieces.

  “Accidents happen in – these kind of situations,” the PAO admitted sadly. “Drones misidentify targets. Pillbox mistakes a civilian for an enemy combatant. No technology’s perfect. Sometimes it fails. It’s that simple.”

  “Yes sir.” Dimming rainbows, bleeding into the night.

  “So far the logs support Blanch’s interpretation. Might be a few days before we know for certain.”

  “A few days we don’t have. Unfortunately.”

  The general swept a finger across his tacpad. A muted newsfeed bloomed on the war wall behind him: House of Commons, live. Opposition members standing, declaiming, sitting. Administration MPs across the aisle, rising and falling in turn. A two-tiered array of lethargic whackamoles.

  The General’s eyes stayed fixed on his pad. “Do you know what they’re talking about, Corporal?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They’re talking about you. Barely a day and a half since the incident and already they’re debating it in Question Period.”

  “Did we –”

  “We did not. There was a breach.”

  He fell silent. Behind him, shell-shocked pols stammered silent and shiftyeyed against the onslaught of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The Minister of Defence’s seat, Becker noted, was empty.

  “Do we know who, sir?”

  The general shook his head. “Any number of people could have intercepted one or more of our communications. The number who’d be able to decrypt them is a lot smaller. I’d hate to think it was one of ours, but it’s not something we can rule out. Either way –” He took a breath. “– so much for our hopes of dealing with this internally.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Finally he raised his eyes to meet hers. “I want to assure you, Corporal, that nobody here has passed any judgment with regard to potential – culpability. We’ve reviewed the telemetry, the transcripts, the interviews; FIT’s still going over the results but so far there’s no evidence of any conscious wrong-doing on your part.”

  Conscious, Becker noted dully. Not deliberate. There’d been a time when the distinction would never have occurred to her.

  “Be that as it may, we find ourselves forced to change strategy. In the wake of this leak it’s been decided we have to engage the public. Doubling down and invoking national security would only increase the appearance of guilt, and after that mess in the Philippines we can’t afford even a whiff of coverup.” The general sighed. “This, at least, is the view of the Minister.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It has therefore been decided – and I’m sorry to do this to you, I know it’s not what you signed up for – it’s been decided to get out in front of this thing, as they say. Control the narrative. Make you available for interviews, prove we have nothing to hide.”

  “Interviews, sir?”

  “You’ll be liaising with Mr. Monahan here.” On cue, the civilian stepped out of the background. “His firm’s proven useful in matters of – public outreach.”

  “Ben. Just Ben.” Monahan reached out to shake with his right hand, offered his card with the left: Optic Nerve, twinkling above a stock-ticker crawl of client endorsements. “I know how much this sucks, Corporal. I’m guessing the last thing you want to hear right now is what some high-priced image consultant has to say about covering your ass. Is that about right?”

  Becker swallowed, and nodded, and retrieved her hand. Phantom wings beat on her shoulders.

  “The good news is: no ass-covering required. I’m not here to polish a turd – which is actually a nice change – I’m here to make sure the truth gets out. As you know, there’s no shortage of parties who are a lot less interested in what really happened than in pushing their own agendas.”

  “I can understand that,” Becker said softly.

  “This person, for example.” Just Ben tapped his watch and wiped Parliament from the wall; the woman revealed in its place stood maybe one-seventy, black, hair cropped almost army short. She seemed a little offbalance in the picture; doubtless the helmeted RCMP officer grabbing her left bicep had something to do with that. The two of them danced against a chorus line of protestors and pacification drones.

  “Amal Sabrie,” Monahan was saying. “Freelance journalist, well-regarded by the left for her human rights work. Somali by birth but immigrated to Canada as a child. Her home town was Beledweyne. Does that ring any bells, Corporal?”

  Becker shook her head.

  “Airborne Regiment? 1992?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  “Okay. Let’s just say she’s got more reason than most to mistrust the Canadian military.”

  “The last person we’d expect to be on our side,” Eisbach remarked.

  “Exactly.” Monahan nodded. “Which is why I’ve granted her an exclusive.”

  THEY ENGAGED ON neutral territory, proposed by Sabrie, reluctantly approved by the chain of command: a café patio halfway up Toronto’s Layton Tower, overlooking Lakeshore. It jutted from the side of the building like a bracket fungus, well above most of the drone traffic.

  An almost pathological empathy for victimhood. Monahan had inventoried Sabrie’s weak spots as if he’d been pulling the legs off a spider. Heart melts for stray cats, squirrels with cancer; blood boils for battered women and oppressed minorities and anyone who ever ended up on the wrong end of a shockprod. Not into performance rage, doesn’t waste any capital getting bent out of shape over random acts of microaggression. Smart enough to save herself for the big stuff. Which is why she still gets to soapbox on the prime feeds while the rest of the rabies brigade fights for space on the public microblogs.

  Twenty floors below, pedestrians moved like ants. They’d never be lifesized to Becker; she’d arrived by the roof and she’d leave the same way, a concession to those who’d much rather have conducted this interview under more controlled conditions. Who’d much rather have avoided this interview entirely, for that matter. That they’d ceded so much control spoke volumes about Optic Nerve’s rep for damage control.

  If we can just get her to see you as a victim – which is exactly what you are – we can turn her from agitator to cheerleader. Start off your appies as a tool of the patriarchy, you’ll b
e her soulmate by dessert.

  Or maybe it spoke volumes about a situation so desperate that the optimum strategy consisted of gambling everything on a Hail Mary.

  There she is, Monahan murmured now, just inside her right temple, but Becker had already locked on: the target was dug in at a table next to the railing. This side, flower boxes and hors-d’oeuvres: that side, an eightymeter plunge to certain death. Wingman, defanged but still untrusting, sent wary standbys to the stumps of amputated weaponry.

  Amal Sabrie stood at her approach. “You look –” she began.

  – like shit. Becker hadn’t slept in three days. It shouldn’t have shown; cyborgs don’t get tired.

  “I mean,” Sabrie continued smoothly, “I thought the augments would be more conspicuous.”

  Great wings, spreading from her shoulders and laying down the wrath of God. Corporal Nandita Becker, Angel of Death.

  “They usually are. They come off.”

  Neither extended a hand. They sat.

  “I guess they’d have to. Unless you sleep standing up.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “You sleep, right?”

  “I’m a cyborg, Ms. Sabrie. Not a vacuum cleaner.” An unexpected flicker of irritation, there; a bright spark on a vast dark plain. After all these flat waking hours. Becker almost welcomed it.

  Monahan didn’t. Too hostile. Dial it down.

  Sabrie didn’t miss a beat. “A cyborg who can flip cars one-handed. If the promos are to be believed.”

  Be friendly. Give a little. Don’t make her pull teeth.

  Okay.

  Becker turned in her seat, bent her neck so the journalist could glimpse the tip of the black enameled centipede bolted along her backbone. “Spinal and longbone reinforcement to handle the extra weight. Wire-muscle overlays, store almost twenty Joules per cc.” There was almost a kind of comfort in rattling off the mindless specs. “Couples at over seventy percent under most –” A little, Corporal.

  “Anyway.” Becker shrugged, straightened. “Most of the stuff’s inside. The rest’s plug and play.” She took a breath, got down to it. “I should tell you up front I’m not authorized to talk about mission specifics.”

  Sabrie shrugged. “I’m not here to ask about them. I want to talk about you.” She tapped her menu, entered an order for kruggets and a Rising Tide.

  “What’re you having?”

  “Thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  “Of course.” The reporter glanced up. “You do eat, though, right? You still have a digestive system?”

  “Nah. They just plug me into the wall.” A smile to show she was kidding. Now you’re getting it.

  “Glad you can still make jokes,” Sabrie said from a face turned suddenly to stone.

  Shit. Walked right into that one.

  Down in the left hand, a tremor. Becker pulled her hands from the table, rested them on her lap.

  “Okay,” Sabrie said at last. “Let’s get started. I have to say I’m surprised Special Forces even let me talk to you. The normal response in cases like this is to refuse comment, double down, wait for a celebrity overdose to move the spotlight.”

  “I’m just following orders, ma’am.” The tic in Becker’s hand wouldn’t go away. She clasped her hands together, squeezed.

  “So let’s talk about something you can speak to,” Sabrie said. “How do you feel?”

  Becker blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “About what happened. Your role in it. How do you feel?” Be honest.

  “I feel fucking awful,” she said, and barely kept her voice from cracking.

  “How am I supposed to feel?”

  “Awful,” Sabrie admitted. She held silence for a respectable interval before pressing on. “The official story’s systems malfunction.”

  “The investigation is ongoing,” Becker said softly.

  “Still. That’s the word from sources. Your augments fired, you didn’t. No mens rea.”

  Blobs of false color, spreading out against the sand.

  “Do you feel like you killed them?”

  Tell her the truth, Monahan whispered.

  “I – part of me did. Maybe.”

  “They say the augments don’t do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. They just do it faster.”

  Six people on a fishing trip in an empty ocean. It didn’t make any fucking sense.

  “Is that the way you understand it?” Sabrie pressed. “The brain decides what it’s going to do before it knows it’s decided?”

  Becker forced herself to focus, managed a nod. Even that felt a bit shaky, although the journalist didn’t seem to notice. “Like a, a bubble rising from the bottom of a lake. We don’t see it until it breaks the surface. The augs see it – before.”

  “How does that feel?”

  “It feels like – “ Becker hesitated.

  Honesty, Corporal. You’re doing great.

  “It’s like having a really good wingman sitting on your shoulder, watching your back. Taking out threats before you even see them. Except it’s using your own body to do that. Does that make sense?”

  “As much as it can, maybe. To someone who isn’t augged themselves.” Sabrie essayed a little frown. “Is that how it felt with Tionee?”

  “Who?”

  “Tionee Anoka. Reesi Eterika. Io –” She stopped at something she saw in Becker’s face.

  “I never knew,” Becker said after a moment.

  “Their names?”

  Becker nodded.

  “I can send you the list.”

  A waiter appeared, deposited a tumbler and a steaming platter of fluorescent red euphausiids in front of Sabrie; assessed the ambiance and retreated without a word.

  “I didn’t –” Becker closed her eyes. “I mean yes, it felt the same. At first. There had to be a threat, right? Because the augs – because I fired. And I’d be dead at least four times over by now if I always waited until I knew what I was firing at.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Only this time things started to – sink in afterward. Why didn’t I see them coming? Why weren’t the –”

  Careful, Corporal. No tac.

  “Some of them were still – moving. One of them was talking. Trying to.”

  “To you?”

  Up in ultraviolet, the textured glass of the table fractured the incident sunlight into tiny rainbows. “No idea.”

  “What did they say?” Sabrie poked at her kruggets but didn’t eat.

  Becker shook her head. “I don’t speak Kiribati.”

  “All those augments and you don’t have realtime translation?”

  “I – I never thought of that.”

  “Maybe those smart machines saw the bubbles rising. Knew you wouldn’t want to know.”

  She hadn’t thought of that either.

  “So you feel awful,” Sabrie said. “What else?”

  “What else am I feeling?” The tremor had spread to both hands.

  “If it’s not too difficult.”

  What the fuck is this he said I’d be steady he said the drugs –

  “They gave me propranolol.” It was almost a whisper, and Becker wondered immediately if she’d crossed the line. But the voice in her head stayed silent.

  Sabrie nodded. “For the PTSD.”

  “I know how that sounds. It’s not like I was a victim or anything.” Becker stared at the table. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  “It’s a common complaint, out there on the cutting edge. All those neurotransmitters, synthetic hormones. Too many interactions. Things don’t always work the way they’re supposed to.”

  Monahan, you asshole. You’re the goddamn PR expert, you should’ve known I wasn’t up for this...

  “I feel worse than awful.” Becker could barely hear her own voice. “I feel sick…”

  Sabrie appraised her with black unblinking eyes.

  “This may be bigger than an interview,” she said at last. “Do you think we could arrange a couple of follow-ups, maybe turn this into an in-depth
profile piece?”

  “I – I’d have to clear it with my superiors.”

  Sabrie nodded. “Of course.”

  Or maybe, Becker thought, you knew all along. As, two hundred fifty kilometers away, a tiny voice whooped in triumph.

  THEY PLUGGED HER into an alternate universe where death came with an undo option. They ran her through scenarios and simulations, made her kill a hundred civilians a hundred different ways. They made her relive Kiribati again and again through her augments, for all the world as if she wasn’t already reliving it every time she closed her goddamn eyes.

  It was all in her head, of course, even if it wasn’t all in her mind; a highspeed dialog between synapse and simulator, a multichannel exchange through a pipe as fat as any corpus callosum. A Monte-Carlo exercise in tactical brutality.

  After the fourth session she opened her eyes and Blanch had disappeared; some neon red-head had replaced him while Becker had been racking up the kills. Tauchi, according to his name tag. She couldn’t see any augments but he glowed with smartwear in the Megahertz range.

  “Jord’s on temporary reassignment,” he said when she asked. “Tracking down the glitch.”

  “But – but I thought this –”

  “This is something else. Close your eyes.”

  Sometimes she had to let innocent civilians die in order to save others. Sometimes she had to murder people whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time: blocking a clean shot on a battlebot that was drawing down on a medical team, or innocently reaching for some control that had been hacked to ignite a tank of H2S half a city away. Sometimes Becker hesitated on those shots, held back in some forlorn hope that the target might move or change its mind. Sometimes, even lacking any alternative, she could barely bring herself to pull the trigger.

  She wondered if maybe they were trying to toughen her up. Get her back in the saddle, desensitized through repetition, before her own remorse made her useless on the battlefield.

  Sometimes there didn’t seem to be a right answer, no clear way to determine whose life should take priority; mixed groups of children and adults, victims in various states of injury and amputation. The choice between a braindamaged child and its mother. Sometimes Becker was expected to kill with no hope of saving anyone; she took strange comfort in the stark simplicity of those old classics. Fuck this handwringing over the relative weights of human souls. Just point and shoot.