by Linda Nagata
Tran laughs. “He must have figured out quick it’s not a good idea to get Fadul mad.”
Since Tran was recruited into 7-1, I don’t think there’s been a day at C-FHEIT that he hasn’t found a way to piss off Fadul. “Tran? Serious question. Why haven’t you figured that out?”
This gets a cocky smile. “Just a dumb grunt, sir.”
I sit at one end of the sofa and ask Kanoa, “Are they okay?”
He sits in an armchair. “Julian is improving, but he probably won’t return to active duty. Dunahee and Escamilla are out for another two weeks. Roman and Fadul are fine.”
“So we’re still understaffed. Papa says—” I catch myself. “Leonid Sergun—he says there’s another mission. Do you know anything about it? We were brought here to discuss it, but that was a lie. No one’s talking to us.”
“I heard you refused to talk.”
“I refused to debrief. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Is there a mission?”
“There’s talk of one. I only know about it in general outline and I don’t know if it’s meant to be ours. But if it is? We’re not ready for it.”
He gets up again, picks up his suitcase. It’s a gray hard-shell that doesn’t appear to be very heavy. I jump as he lofts it onto the sofa next to me. “This caused some commotion when it was delivered to the front gate this morning. It came packed in foam inside a cardboard shipping container. Explosive Ordnance Disposal was called in. They considered blowing it up.”
“Fuck,” I growl, realizing what it has to be. I grab the suitcase by the handle and stand up with it. “Do you know how much this cost me?”
“Yes, actually, I do, since I was reviewing the accounts on the flight over here.”
I head for my room, hobbling on my broken feet for the last time.
Tran is right behind me. “What is it?”
I throw the suitcase on the bed, pop the hasps, and open it.
“Holy shit,” Tran says. Then he turns to yell back into the living room, “Hey Logan, Shelley’s got new feet.”
I sit on the bed, and with Tran watching, I slide up my trouser until I expose the knee joint on my right leg. I pop the leg off and drop it on the floor. Then I examine the joint. The connections look clean, so I snap the new leg in place. I grunt against a pulse of pain that shoots up my spine, but it’s gone as soon as it comes.
“Let’s see you move it,” Tran says. “Does it work?”
I stretch my toes. Stand up. Put weight on the new leg. Walk around in a circle. It feels perfect.
Logan is standing in the door, arms crossed, watching me with a severe expression. “You ordered that?”
“No.” I drop back onto the bed to swap out my left leg. “The engineer who designed these legs ordered them for me.”
“And you made contact with him? You told him you were here?”
“I told the manufacturer—although Joby probably got a copy of the shipping notice.”
“That is a fucking security violation, Shelley. Anyone paying attention knows where you are.”
I snap the new left leg into the joint. This time, I’m ready for the flash of pain. “Being unfit for duty is a violation too. I wasn’t going to let my CO nail me for that.”
“Like you care what your CO thinks?” he asks in a low voice.
I let this pass without comment while I take a minute to pack up the old legs. They need to get shipped out to Joby. Shooing Logan out of the doorway, I head back to the living room.
Kanoa is waiting by the front door. “You ready?”
“Are we going back to C-FHEIT?”
“Now? No. We’re staying in Germany. This is our base of operations for the next few weeks.”
“The rest of the squad is coming in?”
“Depends on events. Depends if we take the mission. For now, you three are the squad. ETM 7-2, remember?”
“Three soldiers do not make a squad. We can’t operate without more personnel.”
“I know. But we’re not moving forward at all unless each of you passes a medical evaluation. Get yourselves cleared for duty, and then we’ll see about bringing in 7-1.”
• • • •
I’m worried. What if I don’t pass medical? My new legs give me the mobility I need, but what if my lungs don’t hold up?
The MPs salute Kanoa as we walk in a group to a white SUV parked at the curb. Logan and Tran get into the back. I take the shotgun seat. Kanoa slides behind the wheel. But instead of starting the engine, he turns to me. “You feeling okay?”
“What? Why?”
His gaze drifts. He’s looking at something in his overlay. “You’re showing a lot of anxiety. We might need to get Bryson to adjust your baseline after all.”
My skullnet’s receiver is gone, but the transmitter works fine. It sends regular reports on my physical state, which Kanoa can pick up when I’m logged into gen-com. I cast a warning glance over my shoulder. Logan looks to heaven for comfort, Tran smirks, but neither says anything. I tell Kanoa, “Yeah, we’ll probably need to talk about that.”
I use my overlay to pull up a colored graph of my neurological status. The only time I ever look at this graph is when I want to teach the skullnet new routines. Then, the shifting colors can measure progress. I think calm, I imagine calm, I synthesize calm in my brain, and the graph reacts with a calm, light blue hue pushing out the anxious red.
I’m surprised it works that well—but then, the embedded AI has studied me for a long time.
Kanoa drives out of the housing area on a concrete road tufted with dry weeds that sprout from jagged cracks. It’s about four hundred meters through a brown field to the cluster of administrative buildings I saw on the garrison’s satellite image. The first building we pass is a three-story monster with boarded-up windows that probably served as a barracks seventy years ago. Across the street from it is a newer structure, a sprawling one-story that looks like it dates from the 1960s. A flagpole stands in front of it, but no flag is flying. “Welcome to the command center,” Kanoa says, pulling into a parking space in front of it.
There is no signage to support the building’s identity, but there is a rigged MP on duty just inside the glass doors, HITR held across his body. He steps aside to let us pass.
The lobby is empty, the building silent except for our footsteps, but it’s clean, the lights are on, and the air is fresh and warm.
We take a stairway down to the basement. Medical is behind an unmarked door. There is no receptionist, no assistant. Just the physician, who runs her tests, and then docks me for lingering damage in my lungs, claiming my lung capacity has been reduced by six percent. Tran doesn’t show any pulmonary deficits, which isn’t fucking fair because he was worse off than me coming out of the UGF.
“It’s all in the genetics,” Tran crows. “The primal power of my African side combined with the spiritual potency of my Asian ancestry has blessed me with superhuman recuperative powers. You’re just too much of a blend, Shelley. Average all around.”
I think I’ll put him on point for the next mission, for a more direct test of his superhuman powers.
I’m allowed to pass though, out of deference to my “superior physical condition,” which is bullshit. The real story, I suspect, is that the doctor is under orders to pass us so long as she feels we won’t collapse on the battlefield.
• • • •
We return to the house, to find that our LCS gear has been delivered in our absence.
Our helmets and dead sisters have been brought in from C-FHEIT. Logan and I get our original weapons reissued, absent the ammunition, while Tran gets a new HITR to replace the one buried under the weight of a mountain.
There are new uniforms too. As always, they have no rank insignia or emblems. The camo pattern isn’t one I’ve seen before. It’s charcoal and brown—darker than day-use desert camo, but way too light for night patrols. There are new packs and armored vests in the same pattern.
Tran holds up a jacket, a skep
tical eyebrow raised high. “This is ugly as shit.”
I have to agree. “What’s this pattern designed for?” I ask Kanoa. “Some dirty urban center?”
“That, among other things.”
“So we’re heading into urban combat?”
“The mission has not been designated.”
I assume that’s a yes. “I did urban combat in Bolivia. I hated it.”
“It’s the worst,” Logan agrees. “Kids and civilians everywhere.”
There were kids at Black Cross too. Not something I want to remember.
“It’s supposed to be a new fabric,” Kanoa says. “Light-sensitive. Hold the jacket under a lamp, Tran.”
The blinds are still closed, so all the living room lights are on. Tran holds the jacket directly under a table lamp. As soon as the bright light hits it, the pattern’s meandering charcoal lines fade and the fabric takes on light desert colors. When Tran pulls it away from the direct light, the dirty hues return. I reach over and turn off the light. Logan switches off two more. The room dims to twilight, and the camo darkens to charcoal-black.
“Edge,” Tran says. “I like it.”
We want to make sure everything is in working order. So we rig up, strapping into our dead sisters, pulling on our helmets, checking out the links in our new linked combat squad. ETM 7-2. I watch the squad icons line up across the bottom of my visor. Three strong. What bullshit. “Kanoa, you and Abajian need to work out your differences, or we are all fucked.”
“Roger that. You won’t be getting a mission until we do.”
• • • •
That night, after the moon rises, Kanoa sends us out on a conditioning run. I am required to wear athletic shoes, sweat pants, and a hoodie to disguise who and what I am. Logan and Tran opt for the same, given that there’s a light fog, with the temperature below freezing.
Despite the fog, there’s enough light from the moon to see the road, the dark shapes of the neighboring houses, and the silhouettes of two watching MPs. Neither makes a move to interfere with us.
As soon as we hit the street, a faintly luminous blue path appears in my overlay, marking the route Kanoa wants us to run. We follow the projected path through the housing area, toward the airfield.
“Check the two houses ahead,” Logan says. “Lights.”
He’s right. It’s just a hint of light, seeping out past blackout blinds. I turn to look back at our own residence, and it’s the same: only a trace of light visible, though we left lights on in the living room.
“Kanoa’s probably housed in one,” Logan says. “But who’s in the other?”
“Want me to knock on the door?” Tran asks.
Tempting. But we’re already past. “It’s probably where the MPs are staying,” I say. “Let’s keep going.”
Our breath steams in the night. We reach the airfield, run the length of the runway in both directions, then loop around to pass the haunted-looking old barracks and the command center. There are no other lights anywhere, but twice we glimpse MPs rigged in dead sisters patrolling beyond the road.
We repeat the route three times. By the time we’re done, my GPS logs a seven-mile run.
• • • •
Kanoa shows up again the next afternoon. FaceValue confirms my initial impression: He’s worried.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“Stop trying to mind-read me.”
“Something’s off,” I insist.
“Colonel Abajian is here. He wants to see your squad run through an urban combat exercise. Tonight.”
“Can’t do it. I don’t have a squad.”
“I know, and that was the subject of a vigorous conversation. But for tonight’s exercise, you are to assume the mission has gone south and your squad has been reduced to three.”
“At which point we should get extracted.”
“Extraction has failed. The mission still needs to be completed. Highest priority.”
“Air support?”
“Negative.”
“So he wants to see how far we can get before we’re gunned down?”
“He wants to know he’s offering this mission to the right squad.”
“What mission?”
“Survive tonight, and maybe we’ll find out.”
• • • •
At 2100 we rig up in armor and bones and trot over to the hangar, where Captain Montrose—the same officer who met us when we got off the plane from Budapest—goes over the scenario for the evening. “Insertion is by a stealth Black Hawk, but since we don’t have access to one for this exercise, we’re using a standard Black Hawk instead.”
Tran snickers. “Nothing stealthy about that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I advise him.
Montrose continues. “You will be inserted six blocks from the target, a distance designed to protect the gunship from ground-to-air defenses. You will make your way past resistance—”
“Professional?”
“Irregulars.”
“Got it.”
“The target is a basement-level biowarfare lab.”
We’re hunting the angel of death, Tran says over gen-com.
Montrose’s gaze shifts to Tran, which tells me he’s monitoring gen-com, but he doesn’t comment, just continues with his briefing. “You will take control of the facility. Collect intelligence and transmit all data to Command. Relaying that data is your highest priority. We must collect evidence of the specific bioweapons under development. You will then hold the facility until Command authorizes you to destroy it.”
“Then we get extracted?” I ask.
“Assuming you get that far, the exercise is over.”
I trade a skeptical look with Logan. Our last two missions had deficient extraction plans. But this is just an exercise.
“This is a timed operation,” Captain Montrose adds. “The goal is to get in, get the data, and transmit it within sixteen minutes.”
It takes longer than that to discuss the details and to issue nonlethal ammo.
• • • •
It’s just an exercise. I remind myself of that as the Black Hawk puts down on the cracked and weed-grown concrete outside the hangar, because my heart is racing, powered by a cocktail of anxiety and anticipation.
“Combat-hyper?” Kanoa asks over gen-com. He’s along virtually as our handler.
“I like it that way.”
The Black Hawk’s side doors are open. We board. Gunners are in place at the forward windows. There are no seats, but then, we don’t need any. This is going to be a very short flight. At the crew chief’s instruction, we sit in the right-hand doorway, feet dangling into space as we lift away from the concrete. We roar over the base, just above the treetops, with no lights visible below us.
But we’re high enough to see beyond the perimeter fence. Just a few kilometers away, the lights of surrounding towns blaze in night vision. Cars are in motion on the streets and highways. It’s a different world out there.
The crew chief speaks over our helmet audio. “Fifteen seconds to insertion.”
We come in low above an ugly sprawl of concrete block buildings—some burned out, some broken—a mockup of a war-torn urban combat zone. We’re greeted by simulated gunfire, blazing in night vision. The Black Hawk’s gunners open up in response as we drop with stomach-curdling speed toward a small square. But our descent is a feint. The square isn’t big enough for the Black Hawk to land. The rotor wash sends debris spinning away below us as we skew sideways toward a flat rooftop spiked with antennas and netted with empty laundry lines. A low wall encloses it. The pilot settles a skid on the wall. The crew chief barks, “Move out!” And I jump. A horizontal evacuation, keeping my head low, landing in a crouch. Logan and Tran come down beside me.
I sweep my HITR in a half circle, letting the muzzle cams scan the scene so my tactical AI can assess the surroundings. I do a simultaneous visual assessment, noting that the laundry lines are low enough to snag our helmets. Debris is skipping
across the roof, remnants of chicken coops and cardboard boxes that pile up against the enclosing wall. Off to my right, there’s a break in the wall that the map shows as leading to an exterior stair.
The dim glow of a projected path appears in my visor, pointing to the suspected stairway. The Black Hawk lifts off behind us. One of the gunners resumes firing, the sound either suppressed by my helmet or simulated by it, I don’t know.
We are operating without a dedicated angel because the insertion was too precipitous to allow us to deploy one. But we do have data from a high-flying observational drone that allows the battle AI to continuously update a map of the neighborhood. We also have seekers—army-issued microdrones with sound-damping technology, designed for urban surveillance.
I shift my HITR to one hand, open a chest pouch, and pull out the first of the two seekers I carry. “Deploying Seeker-1.”
“Roger that,” Kanoa says. He’ll be handling the device. I hold it clear of my body. He signals the seeker’s helicopter blades to deploy on their struts and spin up. As soon as I feel a tug of pressure, I let it go. The seeker streaks away, buzzing softly as it follows the projected path.
“Street and stairway show clear,” Kanoa reports. “But it won’t last.”
“Roger that. Logan, move out.”
“Moving.”
He scuttles along the path, bent over, his HITR scanning for targets. Tran and I fan out to either side of him so that we can cover him on the stairway. But I pull up when I see motion on the roof across the street.
The rules of engagement limit aggressive action to known combatants. We are not to fire on civilians, even armed civilians, unless the battle AI designates a target. But if we’re being shot at, we can shoot back.
“Kanoa, across the street, what am I seeing?”
“Undetermined.”
Whatever it was, it’s gone.
I move up to the wall, peer over. We are three stories up. The stairway is a steel fire escape that descends in six flights. The street below is clear.
A stealth helicopter isn’t quiet. It’s just quieter than a standard Black Hawk, so we assume the enemy is aware that we have arrived in the zone. That means speed counts for more than stealth. Logan jumps the first flight of stairs, coming down with bang! on the landing. The rusting bolts holding up the stairway twitch. He turns and jumps again.