by Linda Nagata
The Red wanted me to take that shot. That was the priority.
• • • •
I head toward Logan’s position, checking in with my wounded on the way.
“Fadul, you sound functional but you’re showing yellow. What’s your status?”
“Fucking ice splinter went through my left bicep. But I can walk and I can shoot.”
“Roger that. Dunahee, you?”
“Shoulder’s broken,” he whispers between clenched teeth. “I can walk.”
Julian is not ambulatory. He’s got a hole blasted in his gut. Escamilla has stuffed the wound with putty and stopped the bleeding, but it’s a bad wound, he’s losing heat fast, and we need to evacuate him ASAP.
I don’t know yet how we’re going to do that. This mission now qualifies as thoroughly fucked, and if we’re going to unfuck it, we have to move fast. Both logic and instinct tell me that whatever it is we’re looking for, it left on the bird—and I’m going to believe that Roman is right. Damaged and fighting the storm, the helicopter won’t be able to stay in the air for more than a few minutes. So we need to go after it. We need to reach it as soon as we can after it goes down—but with three wounded soldiers, two prisoners, and an oil-drilling platform that still needs to be inspected, it’s going to be some time before we can leave.
“Fadul, I know you’re hurting, but I need you to help Escamilla get Julian to the platform.”
“Shelley,” she points out, “we don’t control the platform.”
“We will by the time you get there.”
• • • •
Prisoners are a burden and now we’ve got two.
Logan has got them stripped of their gear. Tossed alongside their neatly folded exoskeletons is a collection of pistols, knives, Tasers, communications gear, and night vision goggles. They’re kneeling on the ice, still wearing their white parkas. Their thermal hoods, like ours, hide their faces. One’s a big man, his skin black behind the frost collected on his lips and eyelashes. The other has a slight build; the skin around his eyes is pale.
I turn the anonymous dark shield of my visor on them and ask, “Who’s left aboard Sigil ?”
“Just the civilians,” the big guy says. He’s so cold, his teeth are actually chattering. “We were hired to protect the civilians. But Glover ran out on us! Took Morris and Chan with him. Left us here to die.”
Working off of voice and biometrics, the battle AI tags him with an identity: Darian Wilcox, 26, former US Army.
“What were the civilians up to, Wilcox?”
He cocks his head, eyeing me for a few seconds, like he thinks I should already know this. “Lab work, sir. That’s all I know. Important enough to bring us in. Important enough for someone to hire you.”
“How many civilians?”
“Twelve.”
The number confirms our background intelligence.
Wilcox adds, “None of them are going to put up a fight, sir. You can take what you need. No need to hurt anyone.”
“Nice and friendly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wilcox, did your friends booby trap the place for us?”
His answer is an emphatic “Fuck, no! We’re a business. We’re not suicide fanatics.”
“Dumping you was a business decision?”
He glares up at me, his breath steaming. He’s reading a lot into my words. “You don’t need to kill us, sir. We don’t know who you are. We haven’t seen your faces.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But right now I don’t know what Glover left for us, so I’m going to let you go in first—just in case.”
• • • •
No one with any knowledge has argued there isn’t an ocean of oil at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, or that it can’t be extracted, but there has been a decades-long debate on whether it makes sense to try. The petroleum industry has a bigger R&D budget than the gross national product of most countries, but even for them, the cost of infrastructure for offshore oil production is staggering. A failed well could bankrupt a company—but the risk isn’t limited to capital investment. It’s certain that along the way, there will be wellhead blowouts along with oil tanker wrecks, and of course there will be more carbon poured into the atmosphere to accelerate the chaos of heat and storm and polar melt that’s been fucking over the globe in worse ways every year.
And still, there’s a shitload of money on the table. The developmental phase alone provides an opportunity for subcontracting companies to bleed their senior partners for billions in support, supplies, communication, and construction. It’s hard for any government to say no to that.
• • • •
Only five hundred meters of smooth ice separate us from the platform. I want to cross that distance quickly, but our prisoners are clumsy without their dead sisters. They slip on the ice and they slow us down. But our slow pace lets Fadul and Escamilla keep up as they drag Julian across the ice, wrapped up in an inflated emergency cocoon.
As we advance, I keep a close watch on Sigil ’s decks, but there’s no activity, no sign of any defense. I hope that means the twelve civilians are on lockdown, huddled in designated security zones, waiting on rescue. Despite Wilcox’s assurances, I’m worried they’re armed, that they’ll put up a resistance. I don’t want any more casualties.
“Kanoa.”
“Here.”
“You got a status update on Oscar-1?”
“He’s still tied up, waiting for fuel—”
“Waiting? I thought he had a fuel problem—contamination or something?”
“Negative. He’s having a problem with the facility superintendent at the last refueling stop, north end of Ellesmere.”
That doesn’t make sense. Infiltrating phony orders into military networks is a specialty of our intelligence team. I’m not going to pretend to understand how the system works. Insofar as I can tell, our ETM strike squad uses bureaucracy as camouflage. A charade of hacked orders, false identities, and compartmentalized oversight lets us operate with the appearance of an officially sanctioned force attached to the United States Army. It’s a position reinforced by a black-ops budget and need-to-know security that ensures no auditor ever compiles enough information to prove that we are not who we claim to be.
So far anyway.
And compared to engineering an authorization for transport aboard a nuclear submarine, convincing the superintendent of a remote listening station to refuel Oscar-1 should be easy.
“Kanoa, just get Intelligence to push an order through. I need to get Julian evacuated. It’s a two-hour flight just to get here, and if he’s not even in the air yet—”
“We’re working on it, Shelley.”
“Or you could write an order for a military flight. There’s got to be buzz on the network anyway. Glover must have put an emergency call through, and if not him, than the civilians—”
“No. The network’s quiet. I think Sigil ’s communications have been suppressed.”
“Suppressed? How? I thought we couldn’t access their system.”
“Look, even if I can get a military flight, it’s going to leave a footprint that’s hard to erase, and it could have political repercussions. Oscar-1 is still our best option. And you need time to run down that helicopter anyway.”
“It’s Julian I’m worried about.”
“Roger that. We’re doing what we can.”
The closer we get to the platform, the harder it’s going to be for us to return fire if someone does decide to shoot at us from the decks, so I call a halt when we’re still a hundred meters out. “Logan, I want you to take Fadul and Tran. Get in position to provide covering fire if we need it.”
“What about the prisoners, Shelley?”
“Dunahee! How are you holding up?”
“I’ll do what I need to do, sir.”
“I know you will. I need you to babysit a prisoner. The small guy. Shoot him if he gives you any trouble.”
“Happy to, sir.”
“And
stay close to Julian.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Escamilla and Roman, you’re with me. You too, Wilcox. Let’s find out what Glover left behind.”
The platform becomes an ugly industrial roof as we approach the pedestal that supports Deep Winter Sigil and houses the pipes and drill. That pedestal descends seven hundred feet into the deeps below us, but I’m only concerned with climbing its upper twenty feet to the first deck. Fortunately, there’s a caged stairway to make it easy.
I follow through on my threat and send Wilcox up the stairs first, with Escamilla right behind him. They find no activity, no evidence of booby traps, so Roman and I go next.
We clear the first two decks. Kanoa checks in as we climb to the platform’s third level. “We’ve got a thermal image just in from a survey satellite. Low-res, but it shows a hotspot fourteen kilometers northeast. Probably the helicopter.”
“Stationary?”
“Heat profile indicates it—but the ice is rough the whole way. It could take you ninety minutes to reach it.”
“Survivors?”
“Can’t tell—and it’ll be over two hours before we have access to another satellite over the area.”
“We’ll be there by then.”
“Roger that. You need to go after it.”
Running down a helicopter: a little task to keep us busy after we secure Sigil.
A quick inspection of the third deck reveals no one outside, so we turn our attention to the living quarters.
Though the two-story building has multiple entrances, all but one are sealed with ice. Wilcox gestures toward that one. “Main entrance, sir.” It’s a glass-paned door spilling bright light out onto the platform, where footprints shadow the frost.
“Move in slowly,” I tell him, gripping my HITR in two hands. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Wilcox turns to look at me. “It’s a double door, sir. Outer door has to close before the inner door opens.”
I gaze past him. Both the inner and outer doors are glass, which makes it easy to see into the brightly lit, industrial-looking lobby beyond. It’s an ugly room: flat-white walls, gray vinyl floor, black lockers, steel benches. Two bodies are sprawled on the vinyl floor. Both are lying faceup in wide, shallow pools of blood, bullet holes drilled in their chests.
Wilcox turns around, sees what I see. “Holy fuck.”
He falls back a few steps.
“What the hell was going on in there?” I ask him.
“Like I said, sir, lab work. Industrial shit. Some microbiology. I don’t know. Those people in there, they were good people. Geeky scientist types, you know? Interested in everything. And polite.”
I nudge him forward again. “Open the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
He punches a fist-sized button to the left of the doorframe. I stay behind him, intending to use him as a human shield if a bomb goes off, but the only thing that happens is the buzz-and-click of an electronic lock. He opens the door manually. I follow him through.
“Roman, come with me. Escamilla, you stay outside.”
“Roger that, Captain.”
The outer door closes automatically behind us. I hear it lock. The next door opens and we are washed in a billow of hot air, reeking of blood and shit. I push Wilcox ahead of me. No bombs go off. No one shoots at us. One of the bodies is that of a woman, the other a man. My overlay tags them with names. Two of the staff scientists.
We stand there for thirty seconds, just listening. I hear my prisoner’s ragged breathing and the soft hum of the ventilation system. Nothing else.
“Quiet as death,” Roman says.
• • • •
I send Escamilla to check out the industrial shops while Roman and I search the labs and the dormitories, our prisoner in tow. Escamilla finds two more bodies. We find seven more, for a total of eleven. All shot multiple times. Kanoa identifies the dead as scientists, engineers, technicians. “The only one missing is Dr. Toni Parris, a microbiologist. American.”
We record everything, with portrait shots of every corpse.
My prisoner looks on it all in shocked disbelief. He can’t come up with an explanation, but he does point out a lab that was off-limits to everyone except Dr. Parris and two of the other researchers. It’s not off-limits now. Its steel door is blown, hanging on its hinges.
I look past the door at two lab benches, numerous shelves, a ventilation hood, a desk, instruments I can’t identify—but what draws my gaze is a stainless steel refrigerator. It looks inflated, the sides puffed out and warped, the door hanging open, the interior empty, the walls charred—like someone set a grenade off inside it.
“Stay out of there,” Kanoa warns me.
I’m already sweating beneath my thermal gear; fear makes it worse. “You think it’s biowarfare?”
I back away from the open door, imagining my skin itching, my lungs filling with fluid.
“We’re missing a microbiologist, so that’s my guess. She helped them collect the payload from the fridge and then they blew it to wipe any traces.”
I think about it, imagining some kind of plague so dangerous it had to be brewed in an isolated Arctic outpost. And I wonder: Have we found the objective of our recent look-and-see missions?
I turn to Wilcox. He gets defensive: “I didn’t know it was biowarfare, Captain. The people who worked here, they didn’t seem like that kind.”
We all imagine we can recognize evil.
I gesture with my weapon. “Move.” He doesn’t need any more encouragement. I suspect we’re all quietly hoping that Dr. Parris managed her cultures in a professional manner, because if anything escaped into the air system, we are screwed.
We hustle back to the lobby, where the air stinks worse than before. “Wilcox, I want you to get these bodies outside. Let them freeze. Roman, you watch him. Shoot him if he gives you any trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You got no worries with me, sir,” Wilcox says. “Glover fucked me over. I’m never pulling a trigger for him again. But if you’re hiring …”
I scowl and walk outside. “Kanoa.”
“Here.”
“What does Intelligence say about the risk of contamination?”
“Minimal. Glover would have secured the payload. He’s not going to profit if he’s dead.”
“Okay. Then I want to leave the wounded here. Julian is not going to make it if he has to wait out in the cold.”
“Roger that.”
Escamilla returns from his inspection of the industrial shops. “Found two snowmobiles. They’re both shot up. Couldn’t get them started.”
“Okay.”
I walk to the edge of the platform and look down. The rest of the squad is below, anonymous in their black visors, but an overlay identifies who’s who: Tran and Fadul, farthest out, watching the lower decks in case we missed a threat; Logan, crouched by Julian; Dunahee nearby, a pistol in his left hand, loosely trained on the second prisoner, and his right arm bound against his chest.
“Fadul,” I say over gen-com. “Relieve Dunahee. Bring the prisoner up.”
“Aren’t we heading out?” she asks suspiciously.
“Roger that—but we’re not taking the prisoners with us.”
“No, shit, sir. Just wondering why Dunahee can’t do the escort.”
“Dunahee can barely hold his weapon. Now move.”
Logan stands and turns around, his black visor angled to look up at me. He opens a private channel: “Why do you need Fadul? You’re not planning to shoot the prisoners?”
I ponder this question, wondering why Logan would ask it, wondering what he’s heard about my past. I don’t think he knows about Carl Vanda, a man I kidnapped, who never again saw the light of day. He does know about Eduard Semak. I told him that story myself—how I visited the old dragon in his private space habitat and dropped him back to Earth inside an emergency escape capsule, knowing he wouldn’t survive the rough reentry.
I guess that makes me
a stone-cold killer—so I play along. “I could order Fadul to shoot them, Logan. She’d probably do it. Do you think I should?”
“Fuck, no. Shelley, they were just doing their job.”
“Yeah, that’s how I see it. And that’s why I’m going to let them sit in a nice warm room for a few hours, until we’re out of here. That okay with you?”
“Of course! Yes. Sorry, sir. I should have known.”
Yeah, you fucking should have. Even Wilcox thought better of me than that.
“Get Julian and Dunahee up here. The wounded are staying behind.”
• • • •
I’m waiting at the top of the stairway when Fadul brings the prisoner. His eyes are wide and wary, framed by his thermal hood. It’s easy to see he’s scared, but I don’t think too much about it because I’m already engaged in a low-voiced argument with Fadul on a private channel. “You’re going to stay here—”
“No way, Shelley.”
She’s wearing a brace on her arm where she got hit by shrapnel. The wound beneath will have been glued shut, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for a run across the ice.
“You’ll keep an eye on the two mercs and take care of Julian.” Our prisoner crab-walks in front of us, trying to keep us both in sight as we herd him across the icy deck.
“Dunahee can do guard duty. Medical cleared me to continue the mission.”
“Dunahee has a broken shoulder.”
“Then leave Tran.”
“Tran’s green. Your icon is yellow. You’re staying.” By this time, we’ve reached the glass door to the lobby. I punch the button to unlock the door and then kick it open. We all stare for a second at the two corpses dumped into the vestibule between the double doors. Wilcox is standing over them with bloodstains on the cuffs of his white parka and more red smears on his boots and his thighs. Roman has her back to the inner door, her weapon loosely aimed at Wilcox. Prisoner number two misreads the situation.