by Linda Nagata
“Don’t trust anyone outside the squad,” Kanoa warns. “And stick to the mission plan. I’m dropping out of gen-com now per procedure, but we are observing. Good luck.”
“Tran, shut down the link.”
“On it, Shelley.”
I hear the rustle of his equipment. The connection to Kanoa closes, but my network icon remains green. As I eye it a tag slides out, informing me I am linked to an EXALT network. Maybe the Red is watching too.
I push the door all the way open and step outside into the artificial light.
We are on our own.
• • • •
The image of Leonid Sergun included in the mission plan showed a dour, scowling, heavily muscled man, sixty-three years old, with white hair buzz-cut in a flattop above a thick-jowled and weathered face. In that image, he must have been putting on a fierce pose to impress his terrorist clients, because it’s a different sort of man who crosses the patio to greet us. His smile is warm, his blue eyes twinkling. He’s sending off waves of good nature so intense they must surely register on some local EM sensor.
“James Shelley!” he exclaims in a marked Russian accent. As he sticks out his hand, he casts the expected glance at my robot feet. “No introduction needed, of course. It is an honor. An honor.” FaceValue flags him orange: questionable, a difficult read. After a hearty handshake, he turns to my “bodyguards,” who have emerged behind me from the lounge. He offers them a quieter greeting. “Ray Logan, Alex Tran, welcome. All is in order.”
I am eager to cross the patio and get inside the LTV where we will be out of sight of any watchers, but Leonid doesn’t share my philosophy. Instead of hurrying to get us under cover, he extends the introductions, turning to the two men who have come with him.
These are Abaza’s men. The first is maybe thirty years old. He has a long face, light brown skin, closely trimmed ginger hair, and a neat beard of the same color. He’s dressed in military camouflage patterned in green, brown, and gray—forest colors. He’s armed with a pistol in a chest holster and a high-end automatic rifle held snug in the crook of his arm. It’s a Lasher Biometric 762. Like a HITR, it’s coded to its owner and will lock up if anyone else handles it.
“This is Luftar,” Leonid says. “He is here to ensure we arrive safely at our destination, though all the world burn down around us.”
I’m not sure Luftar understands this, but he smiles. “Konechno, Papa,” he says, seeming happy to take on the role Leonid has assigned him. I have a suspicion he’s got heavier gear stashed in the LTV.
Luftar’s companion is much younger. He looks barely twenty, slender, with dark-brown skin and a bright grin. “Damir is our driver,” Leonid says. “You may direct all your curses at him for every bump we hit in the road—as I have already done many times.”
Damir puts on a look of anguish at this insult. Turning his hands palm-up, he protests, “Papa, the road is what it is, and we must not be late.” His English is excellent.
Leonid puts his large hand on the kid’s shoulder and sadly shakes his head. “Make your excuses as you will, you will have no forgiveness from me.” And then he grins and gives Damir a good shake, rattling loose a laugh from the kid.
But when he turns back to us, he is serious. In a low mutter, with one heavy eyebrow raised in question, he asks me, “You are recording what you see?”
I am here because Maksim Abaza wants to gain from my celebrity. So I shrug and say, “It’s well known.”
“It’s why you are here,” he agrees. He gestures at the road, the terminal, the distant buildings. “Look up. Look around. Let the watchers see your face. Let them know you are here, and that you’re not afraid to undertake this business venture.”
This request goes against every instinct. I don’t want to be seen or noticed. I want to be anonymous, out of sight. But it’s too early in the game to second-guess Leonid Sergun, so I do as he asks. I look around, surveying again the road to the main terminal and the buildings beyond, but this time while standing in the light.
“Enough,” Leonid says as the roar of an arriving jet fades. “Get inside before someone puts a bullet in your head.”
FaceValue’s orange flag of uncertainty hasn’t changed.
• • • •
Though it’s called a light tactical vehicle, the term “light” is relative. With its armor and its powerful engine, an LTV masses over fourteen thousand pounds. This one is even heavier, given the armored fuel barrels strapped to its back bumper.
I look inside at an interior that’s been highly modified.
The two front seats are standard, divided by a console. Empty steel-frame gun racks are mounted overhead. Behind the front seats, the setup gets suspect. There’s a blackout screen that prevents anyone in back from seeing out the front windows, and the small windows in back have all been painted out, ensuring that no prospective buyer—or prisoner—confined in the back will be able to see a damn thing that’s going on outside.
I’m pretty sure this LTV has been used more often for prisoners than buyers.
The back seats are gone and the floor has been leveled. A thin mattress has been put down as a concession to comfort—I decide to ignore a large but faded bloodstain, and climb in. At least there’s heat.
Logan and Tran come in behind me. Despite the outward size of the LTV, there’s not a lot of room.
“Kind of a step down from our recent transportation,” Tran observes.
Leonid is standing in the open door, with Luftar beside him. “I’m sure this is true,” he says. “But at least it cannot be shot out of the sky.”
I’m stunned he said it, that he would drop any hint of our real interests. But he goes on in the most natural tone. “I understand you were eager to make this deal and there was little time, but when I heard what you would undertake to arrive so quickly”—he shakes his head—“I am not ashamed to say I worried. But here you are safe, as it was meant to be, and as soon as Luftar has inspected your gear—and we have stored your long guns—then we can be on our way.”
My grip tightens on my HITR as I side-eye Luftar. “You want us to turn in our guns?”
“Only the assault rifles. Luftar will secure them in the open racks in the cab.” He shoves out his lower lip. “It is not polite to enter another man’s house armed for war.”
I’m a fucking arms dealer. Why shouldn’t I be armed for war?
Leonid reads my resistance. FaceValue flickers briefly through an undecipherable sequence of moods as his expression becomes grave and solemn. “You do not know me. But I ask, Shelley, that you trust me as your guide, your agent. We are on the same side.”
Are we?
My own words come back to me: We are engaged in a nonlinear war, with no sides, no real allies, no fixed enemies, no certain battlefield.
Leonid is playing his own game. Semakova said he is here in the service of God or of the Angels, or maybe just the Russian Orthodox Church, while Maksim Abaza and his crew also claim to serve God but under a different flag. And me? I work for the Red.
I force a thin smile, check the locks on my HITR, and hand the weapon to Luftar, who murmurs a quiet thank you.
I gesture at Logan to hand over his HITR, too. He gives me a doubtful look, but he does it. Tran looks rebellious, but what choice does he have?
Luftar disappears with the weapons.
“You may keep your pistols,” Leonid says in a conciliatory tone. “We are all friends here.”
Of course we are. For now, we all have things to gain by pretending our trinity of faiths can get along.
“Now your gear,” Leonid says. “Luftar will inspect your packs and your gun cases, and remove any satellite devices, which he will hold until our transaction is complete.”
This request is easier to accept. I turn over my pack to Luftar, knowing there’s nothing in it to excite interest—not in the company of mercenaries anyway. Luftar pulls everything out—clothing, ammunition, rations, water, first aid kit, and my satellite uplin
k, which he keeps. He works efficiently and respectfully, and then repeats the process with the other two packs. Last of all, he gives the empty gun cases a quick look before stowing them between the blackout barrier and the front seats.
Another commercial jet screams in. After the roar of its engines drops to a bearable volume, Luftar asks, “Nu poyedem, Papa?” My overlay translates. Well, ready to drive, Papa?
Leonid climbs in with us, then gives our armed guard a thumbs-up. Luftar closes the passenger door, latching it from the outside—and my green network icon goes red. At the same time, the passenger compartment goes dark. The only illumination left comes from a few narrow shafts of artificial light seeping through pinholes in the black window paint and leaking around the edge of the blackout screen—just enough light to reveal a problem.
“Shit,” Tran says. “I can’t get a signal in here.”
“Neither can I,” Logan growls.
I have a different complaint. “Where the fuck is the door handle, Papa?”
Leonid has brought a cushioned backrest with him. I watch him in the murky light as he arranges it against the closed door. He leans back, seeming unconcerned as he stretches his legs across the width of the cab. The LTV lurches forward. “You must understand, Shelley. Those who do not take reasonable precautions do not remain in this business long.”
“We still have our pistols,” Tran says.
“Be careful shooting in here,” Logan advises. “The ricochet could kill you.”
“And me,” Leonid says, looking at peace with his eyes closed. “I prefer to survive this transaction. Let us strive for patience and to keep our tempers in check.” I see a glint as one eye opens. “Try to get comfortable. This will be a long drive—and we have pressing business to undertake as soon as we arrive.”
I arrange my pack so I can lean against it. My Stonewall pistol is in a chest holster, a cold weight against my heart. Closing my eyes, I use my overlay to check GPS—but of course I get nothing beyond a message, searching for signal. I open my eyes again. “Can either of you get location data?”
Logan sounds disgusted. “No.”
Tran hooks a thumb at the roof. “It’s the armor. We’ll get nothing while we’re in here.”
“Precautions,” Leonid repeats. “We all have many enemies.”
He doesn’t need to say what is obvious: that there will be camera eyes in this prisoner wagon, watching us, monitoring every word we say—but not the words we leave unsaid.
I focus on a phrase. We still linked?
The signal goes out over gen-com on an encrypted line-of-sight link. Logan says nothing. He doesn’t even look at me. Nothing to give us away—but his flat, synthetic voice tells me what I need to know. Still here.
And Tran: Roger that.
• • • •
I’ve got a detailed map stored in my overlay. I study that, I note the road conditions, I listen, and I try to guess where we’re going.
At first the road is paved and smooth, but we move slowly, with horn-honking traffic all around us, and rumbling diesel engines. The glare of artificial light lances through the pinholes, transiting swiftly across our compartment. It scatters against Logan’s tense face, but where it passes over Tran’s dark skin it disappears, leaving only glints. Leonid is revealed in sporadic flashes. He is looking at me, his gaze stern and resolute, no longer the jovial host who greeted us just minutes ago—but FaceValue still calls it bullshit orange.
“Do you have an overlay, Papa?” I ask him.
This earns a derisive tsk. “I am an old man.” Light flashes over a face that’s now amused. “And now you are thinking to yourself, So was Eduard Semak.”
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. “Semak wore an overlay and he was a lot older than you.”
“So I am younger. I should be more adaptable, yes? But I am adaptable. I learn from those around me and I learned many things from my brother-in-law. I learned the business. And I learned a thing he did not mean to teach me: Know your limits. Eduard overstepped his. Not a path I want to follow.”
“Why don’t you use farsights?” Tran wants to know.
“I do use farsights—when I need to navigate an unfamiliar city or find a face in a crowd. But we are going to see friends. I don’t need a device to tell me their names.”
“Or to measure their sincerity?” I ask.
“No one is sincere in this business, Shelley.”
“Maybe that’s why FaceValue can’t figure you out. It wants to flag everything you say as bullshit, but it won’t flag anything as a lie.”
This makes him laugh. “My nephews rely on FaceValue and they have complained of the same thing. But it’s not me. It’s this machine mind you use, programmed to neatly divide the world into truth and lies. The AI is correct when it reports I don’t lie. Why should I lie? I live my life among friends and I am fond of them all. And if I think half of them are idiots, should I tell them? But a fond insincerity must be difficult to parse.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be.”
I looked up Leonid Sergun in my encyclopedia, but the entry was just a stub. There was no history of him in the mission plan. But I remember what his niece, Yana Semakova, said of him: He did what needed doing. No doubt among his many friends were some who discovered late in their lives that Leonid Sergun did not count them as friends anymore.
But he is changed, Semakova said.
I sure as fuck hope so.
• • • •
The traffic jam outside the blacked-out windows eases, and Damir makes the engine growl as we pick up speed. We leave the city behind. I can tell because no more light is leaking in. Hard to see anything in our compartment, and the road gets rough. Not that we slow down.
I mutter my own curses at Damir as I grope for grab bars and tie-downs. Everyone is forced to brace to keep from being bounced around. I allow the map to fade from my overlay since I can’t read it anymore. Instead, I think about Colonel Abajian.
He’s got eyes on us. Satellites won’t give him the continuous, real-time surveillance he needs. So he’ll be using a drone.
Drones can be tiny—as small as my thumb. They can be the size of a hawk. The drone we use when we operate as an LCS is a three-foot crescent wing, but of course drones can be a hell of a lot bigger than that, faster, higher-flying. A solar-powered electric drone equipped with excellent optics and soaring quietly at thirty thousand feet stands a good chance of tracking a moving subject even in steep, forested terrain—and providing highly accurate targeting data for a cruise missile strike.
Abajian won’t need us to report the location of the facility. He’ll know where it is the moment we disappear inside. From that point on, he’ll have the data he needs to target it, but we are trusting him to wait.
After a long time, the sun finally climbs into the sky and daylight seeps into the back of the LTV. It’s a gloomy illumination, but at least we can see. There’s no comparable improvement in the road. We bounce and jar and rattle. And then we bump so hard there’s a hammerblow clash of metal on metal. Tran and I are tossed into the ceiling. Logan manages to hold on and so does Leonid, but even his patience is exhausted. With his huge fist, he pounds furiously on the blackout screen, cursing Damir—and the LTV slows to a less-insane speed.
Tran rubs at a lump sprouting on the back of his head. “Fucking driver needs to learn to drive!”
Damir knows how to drive. He just has his own fearless style. The engine revs madly. We heave over terrain so rough I wonder if we’re still on a road at all. We brake hard and then shift back up through the gears, over and over again, climbing and descending and crawling around what feels like hairpin turns.
At one point the LTV slides sideways. Luftar shouts useless advice as Damir works the gears, gunning the engine. God knows how far we’ll fall if the road collapses from under us and still it’s not fear I feel. It’s a weird, low-grade anger. I do not want to die on the way to the UGF. I want to get there. I want to find it. I want this m
ission to prove worthwhile. I feel the desire like an obsession that leaves me chemically armed with attitude. I look over at Logan. The intensity of his glare makes me think he’s charged up the same way.
The tires get traction. We shoot forward. Tran kicks the blackout screen with the sole of his boot like he’s trying to kick it out. “Don’t get us killed before we get there, dumbass!”
I can’t help myself. I start laughing. We are fucking robots, programmed, and eager to execute.
• • • •
Four hours and nine minutes after we leave the airport, the LTV finally rolls to a stop.
I hear wind outside. Nothing more.
I need to piss.
Logan’s artificial voice arrives over gen-com. We here?
I ask the same question out loud, addressing the man who should know. “Papa, are we here?”
“No, it’s too soon.” He sits up, pulling his cushion away from the door.
I draw my pistol.
“Take it easy,” he adds irritably. “We are guests. They want to impress us, not kill us.”
The door swings open, admitting a blast of freezing air along with the glare of daylight, blinding after the gloom of the LTV. I squint at the face of our driver, the smiling young madman, Damir, as he peers inside. Damir’s smile widens into a grin when he sees my pistol. “Bang,” he says, targeting me with a finger gun. He laughs and then waves at us to join him outside. “Come, sir. Come, Papa. We can rest here.”
Leonid goes first, clearing the way. I holster the Stonewall, grab my coat, and follow. Logan and Tran pile out behind me, both with pistols strapped to their thighs.
A thin layer of snow frosts the ground. Behind the LTV I can see our muddy tire tracks, but on the unpaved road ahead of us, the snow is clean and undisturbed.
We have stopped near the bottom of a deep, narrow ravine, just at the edge of a scattered cover of young evergreens. A stream runs below the road. Wooded slopes rise above it, framing a sky layered with high, gray clouds. A light wind rocks the treetops. It’s goddamn cold.
I glance into the cab, confirming our HITRs are secured in the ceiling racks like they’re supposed to be. Then I get my coat on.