Going Dark

by Linda Nagata

  “Ten minutes ago, you thought I was here to kill you.”

  “What else could I think? I know how the Red operates. If it can’t observe or influence a local system, it sends in a physical manifestation to reformat it.”

  “A jackboot to kick in doors.”

  “Hey, I’m not criticizing. Look who’s holding my leash. But everyone knows you’re a soldier of the Red. Abaza knows it. He has to, but he’s vain. He wants to share your fame.”

  I sit up again and look below. Leonid is talking to Abaza, distracting him. I see Logan out the side window, walking with Luftar around the platform.

  “Maksim wants to show the world that he defies the Red. That he doesn’t fear it. But he should fear it. You know it. I know it.”

  Down below, Leonid gestures at Damir, who trots toward the base of the ladder on my side of the cab. Tran intercepts him. Takes over as messenger, while I imitate Issam, speaking quickly, with only a slight movement of my lips. “Why are you here?”

  “Because I am a fool! And a coward. They beheaded my friend with a fucking sword! And he was one of them! They decided he’d betrayed the cause. He was a troubled man, but not a bad man. I’m only here because I listened to him, followed him, and now I’m trapped in this circus of murderers. I don’t want to be here, Shelley. I want out. I want you to get me out.”

  I hear the thump of Tran’s boot on the first rung of the ladder and speak quickly. “The entry gate is locked. We need Abaza to open it.”

  “There is a back way out.”

  “You know that? For sure?”

  He nods. FaceValue shows no deception.

  “You’re able to reprogram the launch, aren’t you?” I ask. “Set it to go off at any time?”

  Issam studies me. His focus shifts to the screen of his farsights. Probably scanning the notations of his emotional analysis app. It’s telling him that I want this very much. “Yes. I have full access. No one else understands how to program a launch.”

  I slide closer to the door, getting ready to go. “You might have only a minute.”

  “Time enough.”

  I nod, envisioning incandescent fire. It’s a miracle that I remember to ask him, “Is there anything else here? Any WMD?”

  Tran pops into sight outside the window. I give him a thumbs-up. Coming.

  “No. No nukes. No bio. This is just a conventional cache. Can you get me out of here?”

  “Maybe, but it’s going to take a new plan. Be ready for anything.”

  “You think it’ll be soon?”

  Tran drops back down the ladder. I open the door and step out. “I’ve got a feeling.”

  • • • •

  Leonid again insists we finish the inventory. This time, Abaza backs him. He wants me away from Issam. And he wants his money; he’ll need it when he’s on the road. The forklift operator comes to move some of the tagged pallets out of the armory room, giving me a few minutes to think.

  A long time ago, at the start of the First Light mission, Jayne Vasquez said something that’s stuck with me ever since:

  I think most of the people who know anything about this stuff don’t want to get rid of the Red. They want to control it, because whoever figures out first how to do that gets to run things.

  Issam’s “locally integrated AIs” might be a step in that direction. Charts of real-time activity in the Cloud—supposedly the activity of the Red—diagram disparate elements, and it’s been my impression that the Red is not a single, unified presence. It’s more complicated than that.

  And Issam’s machinations have worked. He kept this place secret, almost to the zero hour. He’s kept himself secret. I want to know how he did that. I want to know more about what he knows: The hazard of it, the possibilities. There is only one way that will happen. My skullnet translates the thought. We take Issam with us.

  Tran is on watch at the armory’s entrance, opposite Logan. Two of Abaza’s men are just outside, smoking, not paying much attention. Luftar isn’t with them; maybe he’s gone to sleep.

  Tran turns his head to look at me; white teeth flash as he cracks a half smile. I remember that same smile back at C-FHEIT, right before we left, when he told Logan, It’s going to be hard to walk away without finishing the mission.

  We get to finish the mission now, because the only way to take Issam with us is to take the UGF first.

  Logan is too disciplined to risk suspicion by making eye contact. He taps the butt of the pistol holstered at his thigh and asks, How?

  Not why? He didn’t get to talk to Issam; he doesn’t know what’s at stake. But he trusts that I have good reasons to extend the goals of this mission.

  Doing so will let us ensure this hidden fortress is destroyed along with the missile platform and Abaza’s cache of war toys. Under the new paradigm, everyone should be visible, everyone accountable, and that means all places like this, hidden away and isolated from the Cloud, need to be eliminated from the world. That’s the core of what we need to do. It’s a bonus that we’ll be able to take Issam with us. He has knowledge we need.

  Leonid is not hooked into gen-com, but he’s a wily old monster who has no need of FaceValue because he long ago learned to read minds. He leans in close to me and says, “Stop brooding. You’ve done your part.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  He looks alarmed, but I ignore him. We need to do this. I know it as clearly as I did at Black Cross when I defied all orders and walked outside. And we need to move quickly.

  If we take Abaza alive, we might force him to open the main gate. If that fails, we could probably uncrate enough explosives to blow the gate open, although in this confined space the backblast could kill us or consume all the oxygen—or trigger Colonel Abajian to launch his cruise missile. Yeah, that’s not an option I like. If Abaza is dead, it’s better for us to retreat down the tunnel. Issam said there is another way out.

  “Be very sure,” Leonid says, his voice a sullen growl as he seals another crate.

  I am sure. I’m too sure. So sure, I know I’m operating on a program that’s running in my head, even if I don’t see the skullnet icon—but that certainty doesn’t change the way I feel.

  While Leonid works, I engage in silent discussion with Logan and Tran to clarify a plan. It takes a few minutes. In that time, a forklift comes to take away another pallet. I wait for it to leave. Then I call out, “Tran, go for coffee.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  One of the two men in the hall goes with him as he follows the forklift out of the tunnel. Logan maintains his post at the armory’s entrance, giving no sign that anything is up.

  Tran will go as far as the barracks room. From there, he should be able to get a signal to his HITR, still in the cab of the LTV. He will order the weapon to fire remotely: a three-round sequence that will cause everyone in Abaza’s crew to look in the wrong direction.

  Out in the tunnel, the remaining guard stretches, muttering in a language my overlay identifies as Turkish, interpreting his words as Long night. Leonid turns an accusing stare on me. I shrug, waiting to see what he will do. If he’s going to betray us, now’s the time.

  His lip curls. He doesn’t like it, not at all. But he’s adaptable.

  He nods, letting me know he’s in. Still, I don’t turn my back to him when I stoop to yank the sealing tape off a crate of single-shot RPGs. Leonid follows my lead and unseals a second crate, one containing M4 carbines—weapons with no biometric locks to slow us down. Ammo comes from a different crate, already open for inspection.

  I expect the guard to question us, but he doesn’t notice; he doesn’t even look.

  It has been a fucking long night.

  I toss Leonid a pack of earplugs, tear open a pack for my own use, and pop them into my ears. In a few seconds they react with the air, making a tight seal, good enough to blunt the worst of what’s coming.

  I pull my pistol from the holster. The tired guard paces past the entrance, singing under his breath to stay awake. I activate
the laser sight, take aim at his ear, and fire. The Stonewall’s built-in noise suppressor reduces the volume, but the report is still loud, even past the earplugs, as it echoes against the tunnel walls.

  My target jerks sideways. His knees fold. Logan moves at last, darting into the tunnel to catch him and drag the corpse into the chamber.

  As I holster my pistol, I hear Tran’s HITR fire—three shots triggered by remote command. The sound is like cannon fire, reverberating against the rocks. It’s followed by the much softer report of Tran’s pistol.

  “Get your earplugs in,” I tell Logan.

  “Roger that.”

  His voice is muffled, but I can hear him.

  I grab a pair of single-shot RPGs, while Leonid loads two M4s with brutal efficiency. He hands one to Logan. “Fast and hard, or we are dead,” he warns.

  “That’s how we do it,” Logan assures him as shouts and outraged questions echo down the tunnel.

  Logan and I bolt for the door. Leonid is on our heels, demanding to know, “Do we have a plan?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  Logan turns, sprinting deeper into the tunnel. He is to secure both Issam and the BXL21, while Tran and I, and Leonid if he’s into it, get to eliminate the opposition.

  I look up the tunnel, to see a spray of red blood on the chiseled wall just outside the barracks room. On the ground beneath it is the corpse of the guard who thought it was a good idea to escort Tran.

  “Tran’s in the garage, recovering the HITRs,” I tell Leonid as I crouch to pick up my pack from the floor. “Don’t shoot him. Everyone else is fair game.”

  “That is not a plan!”

  “Improvise.” I shrug into my pack and then start after Tran, but I slow down long enough to add, “Try not to kill Maksim. We might need him to open the front gate. Take him down, but don’t kill him.”

  Leonid brings his rifle to his shoulder. For a second I think he’s aiming at me. “We are never going to get out of here,” he growls. I duck against the wall as the weapon goes off with a crack!, sending furious echoes bounding back and forth through the enclosed space of the tunnel—but he’s shooting past me. Up front, one of Abaza’s soldiers, stumbling confused from the barracks room, goes down.

  “Logan!” I shout over gen-com. “Status?”

  No answer. He probably doesn’t hear me. Radio communication is going to be unreliable in these deep chambers with their thick stone walls—but I need to know that Issam is not in the barracks room.

  Leonid is shooting steadily, once every two seconds, discouraging anyone from leaving the barracks room. I sprint forward under his covering fire, pass the intervening chamber. The chambers are angled. That lets me see partly into the barracks room before I reach it—but Leonid’s shooting has driven everyone out of sight. The booming echoes of his gunfire mix with echoing shouts—orders, questions, furious threats—to create a cacophony of noise with no direction, all of it muffled by my earplugs. I can’t tell how many soldiers are inside the barracks, or if Abaza and Issam are among them.

  And I can’t shoot until I know.

  As I crouch, my shoulder pressed against the wall, Logan answers one of my questions. Issam is here.

  “Roger that.”

  A clarity of purpose comes over me. What I want to do, what I need to do, is eliminate the opposition—quickly, efficiently, brutally. They outnumber us, and that means we will lose this action if I let them get the upper hand. Sometimes, you have to give up a goal, and the goal I give up is Maksim Abaza. If I worry about his safety, I put us all in jeopardy, so to hell with him.

  I step out from the wall far enough to get an angle on the chamber and launch an RPG. It explodes with a concussion that shudders through the floor and dazzles my eyes. I duck back as high-pitched screams echo up from Hell. Rifles hammer, bullets buzz through the stinking air, stone cracks, and fragments of copper, tungsten, and rock patter against the floor.

  Staying low, I move up a few steps and fire the second RPG. It goes off—and a secondary explosion follows. Maybe a propane tank. I don’t know. An incandescent curtain cuts off any view into the barracks room. I fall back as the heat sears my face. With fire roaring behind me, I sprint back to Leonid. I’m seeing black around the edges of my vision as the oxygen is sucked out of the air. Leonid is still shooting—at what, I don’t know. “Don’t shoot Tran!” I remind him as I duck into the armory.

  “You think Alex is still alive?”

  “Fuck, yes!”

  The air in the armory is better than what’s out in the hall. I breathe deeply, taking advantage of it while I can.

  A grenade goes off somewhere. No way to know for sure, but I take it as a signal that Tran has recovered his HITR from the LTV.

  I grab a rifle, load up on ammo, and go out again, in time to pick up the tail end of a transmission on gen-com.

  “—get to him.”

  “Tran, is that you? Say again!” The inferno in the barracks room has almost burned out.

  “Abaza’s out front, but I can’t get to him.”

  So Abaza is still alive, still dangerous.

  “What’s your status?”

  “Pinned down inside the LTV. Abaza’s behind the flatbed. At least three with him. I can put a grenade into the cargo and blow the truck, but then we all cook.”

  Or suffocate.

  “You’ve got your HITR?”

  “Roger that.”

  It’s a fucking complication, not having Leonid part of gen-com. I yell at him as I head back up the tunnel. “At least four still alive and we can’t afford to blow them up. Not yet.”

  “I’m happy you understand that,” Leonid roars as he lumbers after me.

  He’d do better to save his breath. There isn’t oxygen to spare, and the air tastes poisonous with a residue of burned petroleum, plastics, and flesh. I need to end this soon, or we are all going to suffocate.

  “Tran, we’re giving up on Abaza. I want you back in this tunnel.”

  “It’s a fucking long way from the LTV, Shelley.”

  “You can’t drive the LTV?”

  “Negative. It needs keys.”

  Damir had the keys.

  I look ahead to the barracks room. Scattered fires burn feebly inside. Charred debris, some of it bodies, clutters the floor. Damir is probably not in there. He was dealing with loading the flatbed. He’s almost certainly up front with Abaza.

  I pass the wide entrance to the barracks room. Just as I get to the other side, shots are fired from the garage. Bullets ricochet off the wall in front of me. I drop to the floor. Leonid spins into the barracks room, standing just behind the shelter of the wall. “Negotiate,” he tells me.

  Good idea.

  I’m twenty meters from the tunnel mouth. I can see about half the garage. The flatbed truck is backed against the left wall. Its cab and half its cargo bed are visible to me. The pickup trucks, with their machine guns, are hidden behind the wall to my right. The LTV is parked between them and the gate. Tran is inside it, ready to shoot down anyone who tries to get to the machine guns.

  “Maksim!” My voice echoes against the stone. “Leave your weapons. Come out in the open. I want you face-down on the floor or I blow up the truck.”

  “Idiot,” Leonid growls at me. “Don’t make threats you’re not willing to carry out.”

  “Who said I’m not willing?”

  Two or three seconds pass as he considers this, and then he asks me, “Is it like that?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Maksim!” he shouts. “You know who my client is. You know he is haunted. It is not always his own will that drives him. That madness is awake in him now.”

  “Then kill him!”

  I turn a startled gaze on Leonid, but to my relief, he’s ignoring this advice.

  “No, Maksim. I have made my choice. Now you choose. Do we all die or do we live?”

  For many seconds, there is only the sound of lingering fire hissing in the barracks room, and the distant generator. Then Abaza says in a b
itter voice, not even bothering to yell, “I will open the gate for you. That’s what you want! I will do it if I can leave first with my men.”

  What I want is to set this cavern on fire, to ignite every piece of killing hardware Maksim Abaza has stashed in here and turn his hidden fortress into an oven hot enough to melt the copper in the bullet casings.

  But not yet, I remind myself. Not while we’re still here.

  With my sleeve, I swipe at the sweat on my forehead. Then I look up at Leonid. “Can we deal?”

  He shakes his head, narrowed eyes searching for any sign of movement in the cavern. “If you let him leave first, he will blow up the truck before we can get out.”

  Logan checks in on gen-com. “Shelley.”

  “Status?”

  “Issam is cooperating. He’ll put the missiles on a delayed ignition. Give us enough time to get to the other end of the tunnel before they go off.”

  “Perfect.” That should be enough to bring the mountain down on this UGF.

  It’s almost an afterthought when I ask, “How far is it to the other end of the tunnel?”

  “Unknown. Issam hasn’t been to the other end, but he’s seen others come through.”

  “Okay. We assume it’s locked like this end. We’ll need to bring explosives.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Let me know when you’re set up.”

  “We’re ready now. Countdown starts on your order.”

  “Stand by, then.”

  No reason to hold back anymore. No reason to play games with Abaza. I need to take him out before we go, or he could get into the missile chamber, abort the countdown, and win this contest after all.

  “Papa.”

  “Da?”

  “I want you to go back to the armory. Remember those smoke grenades we saw? Bring me a case. Then collect enough explosives to blow the next gate, and join Logan.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Convince Maksim to let me have Tran. Now go. Hurry.”

  For a huge old man, Leonid makes good speed down the tunnel.

  “Maksim!” I shout, my voice echoing. “I want you to send your men out into the open, one at a time, no weapons.”