Operation Grendel

by Daniel Schwabauer

  Sterling would have pressed the issue perhaps. But who was I? I was just a corporal. Raymin Dahl, Communication Specialist for the Kanzin Colonial Reserve Infantry, 82nd Transport-Ready Battalion, serial number 2276908.

  It was time for me to concede.

  At last.

  “Speaking of Ivy,” I said, picking up the stylus. I held it poised above the dotted line.

  “Yes?”

  “What happens after I sign?”

  Hayan smiled gently, knowingly. “What would you like to happen?”

  I felt my face flush. The room seemed a lot warmer now. But then, the whole negotiation process had been pretense, hadn’t it? “Everything,” I said. “That’s what I’d like.”

  I knew he would understand.

  “All right, Mr. Dahl.”

  I signed the document.

  He took it from me, glanced at my scrawling Ansell Sterling, Capt. UCMC near the bottom, and nodded to himself. “Very good. I shall see this is passed on. And now—”

  The guards took me by the arms and hauled me out of the chair. I didn’t bother to protest.

  [Ivy?]

  She didn’t answer.

  “You asked for everything,” Hayan said. “But everything has a price. I am sure you are not really surprised.”

  My heart seized in my throat like an engine locking up. “A price? Didn’t I just pay it?”

  “You’ve given us nothing we didn’t already have.”

  “I’m an emissary of the United Colonies.”

  “You are a reserve corporal wearing the uniform and insignia of a Marine Corps captain. Technically you are a spy. You just signed a diplomatic document using a false name. I could have you shot and be perfectly within the dictates of the Brahmin Convention.”

  [Ivy!]

  Still she didn’t answer. All at once I knew she wasn’t going to. I was about to die alone, after all of my effort and careful planning, and my story would never even be finished, much less read.

  “Conveniently,” Hayan continued, “your forgery serves the interests of my superiors and the Grand Alliance. So we will take no action at all, except that which you have asked for, and that which will ensure we have all the facts of this situation prior to formalizing the agreement.”

  He nodded to the guards and they pulled me backwards to the door.

  “You’re going to interrogate me?” It shouldn’t have surprised me. Maybe I just expected them to be more subtle.

  “Relax, Corporal. We are just going to ask you a few questions. I must be sure that we are getting a complete picture of what happened here. For that we need to install a symbiotic collar. I think you’ll see an immediate improvement in connectivity with your builder. In fact, this is the only way to give you the everything you have asked for.”

  Everything. Meaning Ivy. She was the everything I wanted, and not just because she could open a link to OrbSyn. But if they attached a symb-collar, I wouldn’t be able to keep her—or any enemy wyrm—at a comfortable distance. And my story would never make it to the network’s live feed.

  “You don’t have to do this!” I fumed. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”

  Hayan came around the table, hands folded. “But I have read your work, Corporal. Including your current work-in-progress. You freely admit that you lie for a living.”

  “Of course I lie,” I shouted. “I’m a journalist!”

  The goons dragged me backwards down the corridor. I planted my feet against the floor panels and struggled for my freedom but accomplished nothing except some fresh bruises and a faster heartbeat. I could feel the steady-stim Laclos had given me finally start to wear off.

  They took me to a tiny sick bay and shoved me onto a neural couch. Clamped its restraining cuffs over my wrists and ankles. Drew webbed belts across my chest, knees, and waist.

  Everything I’d done, everything I’d written, the past few days was about to be sacrificed on the altar of war. Only now it wasn’t happening because of some Fleet decision, or the stubbornness of the Marine Corps, or the nearsightedness of the Senate. It wasn’t even happening because my editor was afraid of angering his superiors.

  No, this time the truth of my story was going to be torn to pieces by the actual enemy, by the Grand Alliance. Because, out of all the things I’d written about the grendels over the years, I’d apparently gotten one thing right: they couldn’t stand secrets.

  After all, a man with a secret is a man with autonomy.

  He’s a man, not a grendel.

  In the corner of my right eye I caught sight of an articulated surgical arm selecting a symb-collar from one of the hive-like storage compartments along the wall. It made tiny swishing noises in the air as its digits twirled.

  Finally it seemed to notice me. It turned the collar above me in a half circle, revealing a fist-sized battery of syringes and scalpels on the opposite side of the surgical head. The arm swept down to within a centimeter of my left eye and paused, leaving me to stare down the point of a syringe.

  Then the arm disappeared behind me, and I could hear it whirling into position behind my neck, just at the base of my skull.

  Hayan loomed above me, smiling with those perfect teeth. “It does not hurt, Corporal. In fact, I think you will find that you like it.”

  I believed him, and the sweat poured off of me. “What do you want?”

  “The truth,” he said, leaning close to wipe the sweat from my forehead with a folded cloth. “Just the truth.”

  18

  The Storytellers

  The initial prick of the syringe gave way to a spreading warmth down the back of my neck, crept across my scalp, and wrapped around both cheeks to my mouth. A click of metallic certainty brought a new sensation, a comforting tightness pressing into the skin beneath my jaw.

  The tension I’d been feeling since I first walked into that mess hall and sat down across from Sterling drained out of me. It was as if the AI on Sterling’s comms, which I still wore, had suddenly become a thermostat for comfort. Every aspect of my physical being was managed. I could feel it.

  The restraints unsnapped. The webbed straps snaked back into their tiny cocoons. The couch inclined, raising my head and lowering my feet as it spun around to face Commander David Dahl.

  He stood at parade rest, left hand crooked behind his back, right hand flat against his thigh. “What are you doing, son?”

  It wasn’t my father. Not my real father. It was just a projection. It had to be. Dad was still stationed back at STRATOP, and even the Alliance’s advanced technology couldn’t grant the grendels access to those corridors.

  But that voice! The voice was that of my own memories, the voice of my real dad, the voice of the man who taught me, if unintentionally, that I would never be respected by anyone who mattered.

  “Defecting,” I said.

  Disappointment tugged his chin forward. “Always did take after your mother. You get your story?”

  “Still working on it.”

  “And the treaty?” he asked. “That signed?”

  I nodded. “Seven-year ceasefire.”

  His shoulders sagged as he looked away. Relief maybe, though the next moment he once again wore the faraway look of a recruiting poster. “Captain Sterling is a good man.”

  Captain Sterling.

  Always someone else.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “He came to me, you know. Asked me if you were the right man for the job.”

  Another lie, yet it stripped my soul bare. It would have been the right thing to do, a human thing if not a military one. “Never mentioned it.”

  “I told him you had the talent and the temperament. That you would do what you were told if you saw the sense in it.”

  “But?”

  “But your sympathies were divided. And they are divided, aren’t they, son?” He pointed at my neck with one shaking finger. “Or you wouldn’t be wearing that.”

  I reached up and touched the collar. I’d already forgotten
it was there. “They’re divided. Yes.”

  “Part colonial, part grendel. Your mother’s emotional strength, and my—” He looked away, eyes glistening. “Well, my weakness, I suppose.”

  “You aren’t weak,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. I chose it.”

  “And your girlfriend? Ms. Weber? Where does she land in all of this?”

  “New Witlund, probably. Unless she can get a shuttle back to Holikot.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “No?”

  “She’ll betray you in the end, if she hasn’t already,” he said. “It’s what they do. They leave.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking of both Ivys. “They leave.”

  He seemed to read my expression. Took a tiny step towards me. “You don’t have to do this, son. You’ve done your part. You don’t have to go over to them. Don’t have to become—”

  “It’s too late,” I said.

  “It’s never too late.” He took another step forward, close enough I could see the weave of his uniform fabric. “You don’t owe them anything. You don’t owe anyone anything. Fleet, the colonies, OrbSyn. You sure don’t owe the Alliance. Only person you owe anything to is me.”

  I looked away, my eyes unfocused on the bank of medical storage compartments. Never in my life had I seen tears in my father’s eyes. “I can’t leave.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  I met his gaze then. He deserved that much. “I’m a prisoner on one of their frigates. And they don’t allow defectors.”

  His chin lifted. He took in the surgical arm, the neural couch, the white paneling in the ceiling. “I see.”

  “One last story,” I said. “It’s all I have to give.”

  He pursed his lips. Stepped back into a stance of polished attention. “In that case, make it a good one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Corporal,” he said. And to my amazement, he saluted.

  They were letting me say goodbye to him.

  They didn’t have to do that. They didn’t owe it to me. But I needed it. And I drank it in like water.

  Throat tight, I returned his salute, and he disappeared.

  The door opened a moment later, but I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t look away from the honeycombed cabinets along the wall, the backdrop of the place he had been standing.

  “Thank you,” I said to whoever was behind me, “for that carrot.”

  “Carrot?” Hayan asked.

  A sick, hollow feeling spread through my gut as I realized what was coming next. But would it be more real than my father had been? “And now the stick?”

  “Ah! More like another carrot. One of my scout teams has located the woman who betrayed you. Ivy Weber. I thought one more goodbye might be in order. You are correct, Mr. Dahl, that I cannot let you leave the Takwin. I have my orders. But we are not savages.”

  This is what I had feared. Not that I was stuck, but that they had somehow cornered the real Ivy Weber. And it was my fault. “Where is she?”

  “Not far. Your cartel has created an impressive network of tunnels in these mountains. Ms. Weber is currently being detained there.”

  Ivy appeared in the room a couple of meters from me. Flesh-and-blood Ivy, the real Ivy, no matter what I had told myself earlier. Her hands were quick-cuffed to a chair—a different one than I’d been secured to—and her hair lay matted with sweat. She wore a prisoner restraint on her left wrist.

  I didn’t recognize the place, though I could see stacks of product fading into the semi-darkness just over her right shoulder. Probably the warehouse they used to supply the city, someplace not far from the Takwin.

  Master Sergeant Ulles, the sniper who had given me his rifle up on that ridge, stood behind her, the barrel of his Wasp EM-11 pressed into the base of her neck.

  “You killed Vermier because she was a traitor,” Hayan said. “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what would you have us do with Miss Weber? She is no less a traitor to both the United Colonies and the Grand Alliance. The Brahman Convention provides for such contingencies under the ‘armed combatants’ provision. Do you have any objection to Master Sergeant Ulles executing her?”

  I gripped the arms of the recliner and edged forward.

  He was testing me. Splitting my loyalties and watching to see which would conquer the other.

  “Please don’t,” I said. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “Deserve? That’s an odd choice of words.”

  “She was just following orders.”

  “But whose orders, Mr. Dahl? Do you really think she answered to Vermier?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe one of yours.” I didn’t really believe it. Ivy Weber may have betrayed me, but I couldn’t believe she would sell out her homeworld.

  “She’s not one of our agents,” Hayan said. “She’s a true colonial—if currently siding with a rogue militia. Actually, I suspect she’s more than she appears. Not just some research clerk working from a basement office in the Holikot embassy, but a field operative. An agent trained in counterintelligence by your government, and working now for those who oppose our new treaty.”

  “If she’s real,” I admitted. “That would be the most likely explanation.”

  “If?” Hayan laughed again. “You could easily find out. Why not ask her?”

  Across the room, sweat beaded on Ivy’s forehead, and she licked her lips. I couldn’t tell whether she resented me or still held out hope that I could somehow rescue her.

  It occurred to me that I wore a symb-collar. However she was seeing me—via flatscreen or grendel holo—she would certainly think of me as compromised. And who knew what Ulles might have told her?

  “Ivy,” I said. “Do you remember our first night together?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  It was an awkward question, mostly because of how I’d phrased it. I had implied intimacy, though in fact we’d done nothing but swap theories about the nature of the Grand Alliance’s control over its citizens.

  After we discovered that my apartment had been burglarized, we talked late into the early morning until the police finally arrived at zero-stupid-hundred. The cops had taken our statements, but since nothing really valuable had been stolen, entered the incident in their system as vandalism. By the time they left we were both so tired we just slept. I woke up two hours later and stumbled into the kitchen to find Ivy sitting there eating eggs and toast, reading a copy of the police report.

  “What was the first thing you said to me the next morning?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. Gave a little shake of the head, as if not believing the question. Or maybe she just didn’t want to answer it. But then she looked straight into my eyes and said, “‘What kind of name is that?’”

  Perfect.

  That is, it was almost exactly what I had said. It differed only in what she had left out. The real, flesh-and-blood Ivy would never have revealed precisely what I’d said.

  I squeezed the arms of my seat into lumps of gel. This was really her, not some wyrm-driven hack of my brain. This was the real Ivy Weber, the woman I had loved, the woman I had wanted to marry.

  This was the Ivy who had betrayed me.

  “Satisfied?” Hayan asked.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “And what shall we do with her?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “What she did doesn’t matter now. Our Fleet authorities will deal with her.”

  “I could do that, yes,” Hayan agreed. “If I felt sure I knew the whole story. But that would mean a compromise. You, Mr. Dahl, would have to give your builder access to all of your memories.”

  All of my memories.

  But that wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be an option. Not unless they gave me what I wanted. “We have a treaty,” I said. “You can’t go around shooting unarmed colonials and claim to be adhering to the terms of—”

  “Our agreement is informal,” Hayan cut me off. “It has yet to be ratified by
either government.”

  “And yet you wanted it. You wanted me to bring it to you.”

  “Someone had to, Mr. Dahl.”

  But I pressed forward to the question burning itself into my mind. “Yes, someone. And I did that. But you forced me into a symb-collar.”

  “You said you wanted everything.” Hayan came around the chair to face me, standing just off to the side so that I could see Ivy looking back and forth between us. It was clear she was seeing and hearing everything. “Did you not mean that you wanted the enhanced version of Ivy Weber you’ve been enjoying at our expense?”

  I looked into Ivy’s eyes, saw the pain flickering there, and hated myself. “Yes,” I said. “That’s what I asked for.”

  “Then where is your complaint?”

  “You don’t need the collars,” I said. “You don’t need them!”

  “Need?”

  “This collar isn’t making me do anything. It can’t make me decide. It can’t twist my will. If you could force me to turn over my memories, you already would have. That’s why you’ve gone to all this trouble. Conjuring Commander Dahl. Capturing Miss Weber.”

  “Force is rarely necessary, Mr. Dahl, except with beasts,” Hayan said. “And the occasional colonial.”

  “But you forced the collar onto me,” I blurted, as much for Ivy’s sake as for my own. “You wanted me to believe that I was losing my power to choose.”

  “Torture a man long enough and he will do anything to make it stop. Reward a woman handsomely enough and she will sell even her own children. But in most cases such extremes are unnecessary. Comfort is vastly more effective than torture. And parents have sold their children for promises no one could keep. Isn’t that the essence of your job, Mr. Dahl? To sell stories to parents? To bring comfort through lies?”

  It was true. It was the thing I had been carrying for so long, the thing that had prompted me to want something different. To write a great war story based on the truth.