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Operation Grendel

Page 22

by Daniel Schwabauer


  But if she wanted the truth, if she really wanted it, I would give it to her.

  I would give her anything she wanted now—even tell her when she was on the wrong track. “Holikot’s not really important,” I said.

  And showed her.

  Corporal Dahl cowering under a clerk’s desk on crappy, stained government carpeting, too terrified even to move.

  This was the guy who wrote all those action features? “Three Days on a Wounded Cruiser,” and “Life and Death as a Harpy Ace”?

  He’d been a lot cockier back in the mess hall, and it hadn’t been hard to get him on board. All he had wanted was a great war story. “And I’m going to write the story my way,” he’d said. “I’m going to tell all of it, and you’re not gonna say squat.”

  “Of course,” I’d said, because I wasn’t going to change his mind, and he didn’t have long to live anyway.

  I looked out the window to the street below, saw Raeburn’s MADAR team closing the distance. They were going to be too late. Footsteps already pounded the stairway down the corridor. I would have to do this myself.

  I waited for the knob to turn, then blasted the door and wall with my flash rifle.

  In the aftermath Dahl had gone fetal under the desk, his soft little journalist’s hands covering his ears, his spoiled, I’ve-got-daddy-issues eyes pressed closed so that he wouldn’t have to see anything.

  When he finally stood to look out the window, I asked, “Are you ready to die for your colony, soldier?”

  His face twitched, pale as starlight, as if he knew what was coming. Maybe he did. “Sir?”

  For just a moment, regret knotted in my stomach. His father, Commander David Dahl, had served honorably, and even if the son was a coward and a dissident and a closet traitor, he had at least volunteered. “Thank you for your service,” I said.

  I shot him through the chest, close to the heart.

  “Don’t worry,” I said before he stopped breathing. “I’ll write the ending.”

  She barely noticed. “Yeah. Your dream. A subconscious projection of your new personality as you tried to become Captain Sterling. You’ve hated yourself for some reason. But I can help you with that.”

  “Raymin Dahl was a mediocre reporter who tried to distance himself from his veteran father by writing feature stories that made militia groups like the one here on New Witlund suspicious of the Corps.”

  Ivy brushed back a strand of loose hair from her face. Slowly she turned in the cramped space so she was sitting on her knees and looking into my face, her hands still folded around my broken right hand. “There is no police report on Holikot that mentions vandalism to your apartment.”

  “You hacked the police database?”

  She shrugged. “Their security systems are basically catnip.”

  I reached out to stroke her cheek with my left hand, marveling that she had found her way inside the frigate.

  Something thudded in the distant recesses of the ship, and I recalled that the J-class frigate had retractable cowling covers. The engines would be heating up soon, entering the final phase of pre-launch. Raeburn wouldn’t be able to extend my escape window. If he didn’t take out the Takwin while it was on the ground, the hammerhead would be virtually useless.

  “Maybe it never got filed,” I suggested.

  “Maybe you’re still not telling me everything.”

  “My story hasn’t gone out yet. Not all of it.”

  She brushed back a wisp of stray hair behind her ear. “You already knew you wanted a relationship with me? Even that first night?”

  “That night I wanted information. My apartment really was vandalized. Some things aren’t meant to be part of a story, Ivy. Whoever trashed my apartment was probably just some random addict looking for a score.”

  “But you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was the first thing I told you the next morning? The morning after the robbery? I know I left something out.”

  I couldn’t stop Ivy from seeing.

  Didn’t even try to.

  Another memory leapt from the cabinet.

  Ivy sat at the kitchen table, elbows on the surface, reading my copy of the police report. She’d made a couple of omelettes, and the smell of breakfast reminded me somehow of my first leave after boot camp.

  I slid into the chair opposite her and yawned.

  “Ansell,” she said. “What kind of name is that?”

  Ivy blinked again. “Ansell?”

  “I told you, I’m not who I say I am. I lie for a living.”

  She bit her lower lip and stared at me for a long time before finally saying, “You recruited me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And planted me in the New Witlund militia to make your cover story believable?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when you admitted to being Raymin Dahl over an open channel—”

  “Even you believed it.”

  “You’re Captain Sterling?” She opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. “The real Ansell Sterling?”

  “I’ve been telling you,” I said. “Even though I’ve tried not to.”

  “But how?”

  “Wasn’t hard to swap images in our personnel files. We knew you’d look. Of course, I had to let myself go flabby for six months. After that it was just a matter of acting out a romance between us, creating a trail of bread crumbs for you to find. I just didn’t expect to really fall in love with you so quickly.”

  She looked past me, as if scanning her own grid. “But that means. . . Did I know the risks?”

  “Ivy Weber grew up on New Witlund. She volunteered. The problem wasn’t planting a girlfriend. The problem was finding the right journalist. I knew you’d take me apart, probably starting from my childhood, so it had to be someone with a similar background. My mother died when I was a kid; Dahl’s ran away. My father was a full colonel; Dahl’s is a commander. We even have similar personality profiles.”

  “Why similar? What does that mean? That you both wanted full AI integration?”

  I shrugged. “That’s what the tests said, anyway. I’m still convinced we’re made by our choices more than our genes or our environment. But I’m in PSYOPS, so maybe that’s just my training talking. Anyway, Dahl was far from a perfect fit.”

  “It’s hard to identify with someone you don’t like.”

  “Yes, but I meant that I wanted a hard news reporter, and Dahl specialized in human interest pieces—and vaguely treasonous ones, at that. I had to read everything he’d ever written just to wrap my mind around his way of thinking. Even went through Major Weston’s training program at OrbSyn. But after all that I still wasn’t sure Dahl was the one. Then, during our preparation exercises, it occurred to me that Raymin Dahl’s strength might be a grendel weakness. And since we hadn’t found any better options and were running out of time, I became someone I disliked.”

  “And you shot him.”

  I wasn’t proud of it. My biggest regret was not that it had been necessary, but that I would never get a chance to apologize to the man’s father. Corporal Dahl’s involuntary death may have been his greatest service to the United Colonies, but his father deserved better. “Yes.”

  “And you erased the bracelet and forced a hard reset? Left behind that one memory so you could pretend to find it disturbing?”

  “I looked out the window of the cafeteria so you wouldn’t be able to reference Dahl’s actual face. That fragment served the story I was telling—the story you wanted to believe.”

  “That’s . . . impressive.”

  I expected her to kill the feed, but it continued across my grid in a flickering stream.

  Eyes closed, I kissed her hand. “Salesmen are always the easiest marks. They know how the game is played. And that makes them overconfident.”

  “You think we’re overconfident? We found the counter-virus, you know. Even if you hadn’t written about it, we’d have spotted it easily. Our firewalls are lightyears ahead o
f your Marine Corps diggers.”

  “You were supposed to find the counter-virus,” I said. “That’s why I wrote about it. A nudge in the wrong direction. No, you have another weakness.”

  “Really?” Ivy leaned back. She sounded genuinely interested. “What weakness?”

  —WESTON, C: PART TWO BREAKING NOW.—

  The second feature ticked across my OrbSyn feed, and I indulged in a moment of quick reading to satisfy myself that Weston hadn’t tinkered with it. Not that he could have done much. There wasn’t enough time.

  Why It Had to Be Done, By CPL Raymin Dahl, Embedded with MADAR Team Two . . .

  —WATCHING THE SCROLL,— I sent. —THREE IS INBOUND.—

  I shot the third feature, “Slave to a Quantum Master,” across the subnet, and heaved a sigh of relief.

  —WESTON, C: I’M SUPPOSED TO ASK HOW MANY MORE FEATURES THERE ARE.—

  Supposed to ask. My contacts in the PSYOPS unit had obviously been monitoring this exchange from the moment I logged in. They were calling the shots now. Weston was just doing what they told him to do. Following the protocols we’d established months ago when this assignment started.

  —JUST ONE,— I answered. —ALL THOUGHT-TO-TEXT, STREAMING NOW, AND FOR AS LONG AS THE LINK LASTS.—

  —WESTON, C: INDULGE AN OLD MAN. FORGIVE ME THOSE COMMENTS I MADE BEFORE YOU LEFT. I MISJUDGED YOU.—

  I stared at the words for a long moment, fighting back the lump in my throat. I’d been looking for those words all my life. Words of respect from a man I looked up to. An officer. Someone like my father, who took care of his marines and gave his life in the service of others.

  But were they meant for me?

  Did Major Weston really know who he was talking to? I’d been a random marine officer he’d trained for one month on orders from Fleet. Not a real journalist. A pretender. A guy he’d sent away with press credentials and a vague command to go write me a great war story. Did he really remember me? Or was he still thinking of Corporal Raymin Dahl?

  Maybe I didn’t deserve his respect, after all.

  —ACTUALLY, YOU HAD ME RIGHT.—

  “What weakness?” Ivy repeated.

  I considered not telling her, but that might make things worse. I figured she was less likely to accept the truth if I hit her in the face with it. “I knew you’d tell me the wrong story.”

  “Because we had the wrong hero?”

  “You’ve played the role of the storyteller for so long that you can’t see it—but you’re caught up in this story too.”

  She leaned forward to kiss me on the forehead, then sat back on her heels and stared into my eyes. “We’re caught in our own story?”

  “You think the universe is just matter and energy,” I said. “You think that’s the lede. It’s why your stories have to end in a lie, because a lie is the only way you can make them fulfilling. But life isn’t a hard news story, Ivy.”

  “No?”

  “It’s a feature.”

  She gave me a half smile, as if she knew I was still missing something important but didn’t know how to tell me, or didn’t want to. “This feature is almost at an end, Ansell. I’m so sorry. I promised you everything, but there isn’t time. And that wasn’t my decision.”

  “I know.”

  The white timer in the corner of my vision showed 00:48.

  00:47.

  00:46.

  The engine vibrations coming through the wall and floor grew.

  “You aren’t going to stop the warhead?” I asked.

  “Why should we? We got what we came for.”

  “What about Hayan and his rangers?”

  “They’ll die heroes, each the center of a private story. Taking out a defenseless frigate during a peaceful negotiation will not play well in your core media outlets. It will give us the pretense for ripping up the letter you signed.”

  But if they were not going to honor the peace treaty, why had the grendels come to New Witlund in the first place? All that energy and material expense just to uncover what the colonies were willing to part with? To discover just how desperate the republic was?

  Light from the overhead panel framed Ivy’s face in a blue halo.

  And I realized what I should have understood earlier. Should have seen because it was streaming across my vision in bright flickering images. The Grand Alliance wasn’t backing away from their invasion of the local system. They had no intention of pausing the war, even if a treaty were eventually ratified by the Senate.

  Quelon still burned.

  00:33.

  My third feature entered OrbSyn’s live feed so quickly I knew Weston must be sending it out without even reading it.

  Slave to a Quantum Master, By CPL Raymin Dahl, Embedded with MADAR Team Two . . .

  I didn’t need to send the last story, “Say ‘No’ to Wyrms.” It was already streaming direct from my thought-to-text file.

  “Tell me something,” Ivy said. “If you’re not really Raymin Dahl—if you’ve been Captain Sterling all along—why do you care so much about publishing your little war story? You’re not a writer. And it’s not even carrying a counter-virus.”

  “Call it a gift,” I said. “Meant for the edgers. A public story to defeat a billion private ones. If our fleet can’t protect them, we wanted to show them how to resist you without bombs or rockets. For that we needed an informant on the other side—and a way to tell his story.”

  00:19.

  “But you aren’t resisting me, Ansell.” Ivy navigated back to my side and held my arm again, leaning into me. “You aren’t resisting! You don’t even want to!”

  “True,” I whispered, hoping, praying, that my theory had been right all along, and truth really was the best PSYOP.

  The truth that our real enemy wasn’t the grendels but their AI overlords.

  The truth that their wyrms weren’t monsters, but something much, much worse.

  The truth that they didn’t win by taking from us everything we wanted but by giving it to us.

  The truth that I had lost my private battle the moment I’d slipped that infected comms back onto my wrist.

  “I want you more than anything,” I said. “And I think that’s going to terrify every colonial in the edge.”

  The truth . . . that Ivy was letting this story go out to the colonies unredacted?

  “No, Ansell.” She stroked my broken hand with gentle fingertips. “It will drive them to us by the millions.”

  00:00.

  20

  Psyop

  —[NO DATA]—

  The pressure on my legs builds. It hurts.

  Right arm too, which I can’t move.

  Smoke clotting the air, heavy in my lungs.

  I cough.

  Light in a jagged hole above me, just out of reach.

  Comms chirps a CRITICAL beacon, the red warning icon pulsing on my grid like a heartbeat.

  It is a heartbeat.

  My heartbeat.

  That’s what they—

  Something heavy, a beam maybe, has come down across the locker onto my shins.

  Floor wet.

  “Here!” a voice says.

  Sounds like Laclos.

  “Here! He’s here!”

  Gloved hands pry back the warped skin of the locker and peer inside. MADAR helmets, bug-eyed with systems goggles, cut streaks of green through the swirling smoke.

  “Don’t move, Captain,” Laclos says. “Don’t move.”

  Stupid thing to say.

  Couldn’t move if I wanted to. No strength. And my legs are pinned under—

  Pain lances through my thighs all the way up from the ankles, arcing my back.

  Not pinned.

  Gone.

  My legs are gone.

  The white just above each knee is bone.

  Light from the sun breaks the smoke, shimmering.

  Quelon overhead.

  Albedo at one third.

  Morning.

  God, the pain—

&nb
sp; Hands reaching in. Raeburn, Hopper, Pajari.

  Grunting against the beam.

  Lifted.

  —[NO DATA]—

  Laclos again, staring down at me, holding my left hand.

  Pain clears a little, not much.

  Makes thinking easier. Less fragmented.

  I try to swallow but my throat is thick with smoke, thick with a mass of tongue that won’t work properly, won’t let the words out.

  And where is Ivy?

  “Stay with me, Cap,” Laclos says. “Stay with me. You’re going to be fine but you’ve lost a lot of blood. I got trauma packs on your legs and wrist and a Valkyrie inbound. We’ll have you in a hospital back on base in twenty.”

  The story went out? I try to say. The story really made it to OrbSyn’s feed?

  But all I get out is a harsh croak: “Stor—?”

  Laclos nods. “Your story? Yeah. We got an emergency SITREP from Fleet as soon as the Strangler blew. Explained everything. Your story’s hitting eyes all over. Something else, huh? Maybe it will make a difference. First time we’re getting intel from the other side.”

  “Read it?” I ask. I need to know it’s real.

  “Your story?”

  I nod as a shaft of fire pulses through my body.

  She notices. Touches the pad hooked into my bracelet. “Don’t worry about this, Cap. Pajari wired a wyrm killer to your comms and that collar they put on you. Fried her right out of there. I’ve got you on pain meds but we can’t give you too much or your heart will stop.”

  I want to tell her that I don’t have endocarditis, but the word is too big for my mouth, and the sky overhead is shrinking as a big metal bird grows inside it.

  A glimpse behind the curtain. That’s what I wanted. A glimpse we’ve never had. Now all I want is to live there, backstage.

  But Ivy is gone. All the way gone. I can feel it.

  “Read it,” I say again.

  Her eyes scan left, and I can see she’s searching her grid.

  “Knew it,” I say. “You can’t read.”

  Laclos grins. “You, sir, are a jackwagon. Which means the universe will make sure you live. Okay here it is. ‘OPERATION GRENDEL, by Raymin Dahl. Confession. Like every journalist, I lie for a living. In this case, I had to become someone else in order to get the story. I’m not who I say I am. My name isn’t Ansell Sterling, and I’m not a captain. I’m not even a marine.’” She pauses. “That’s not true, is it, sir?”

 

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