by Linda Nagata
After a block, Logan catches up with me. He startles me by pulling his helmet off too. It’s rare to see him break the rules. “We’re walking back.”
I glance behind us to see everyone on the move, dark shapes in the silvery light. Tran is conferring with Roman and Fadul. Jaynie is walking with Flynn. All of them have their helmets on, but now that I know who they are, it’s easy for me to identify them.
“Shelley, you need to put your helmet back on. Gen-com updated. We’re all one squad now.”
“No, we’re done. ETM is done. We cannot operate with Abajian fucking up the system.”
“We’re not done.”
I stop and face him. “You want to stay here? That’s your choice. I’m leaving. I’ve done too much to put up with Abajian’s bullshit, abandoning us in the field, locking us up in fucking protective custody, taking half my squad away from me and running them as the enemy. You want to deal with that, Logan, it’s yours. Take a field promotion. You’re in charge, because I’m done.” By this time the squad has caught up with us, but I ignore them. I turn and start walking again. “I’m just going to change into my civilian clothes, then I’m on my way. Shouldn’t be hard to hitchhike to Berlin. I’ll find the American embassy, make them issue me a passport. Then I’m going home.”
“You’re dreaming.”
Delphi is out there somewhere. I decide I’m going to find her, even if she has moved on.
Logan is shadowing me again. “The war’s not over.”
“I fucking know that! But I can’t operate without trust, and I don’t trust Abajian. He put us up against our own people. What the fuck was that about?”
“I don’t know.”
I stop and look back again to where Jaynie is following just a few meters behind. “And what the fuck are Vasquez and Flynn doing here?”
“They’re linked into 7-1.”
“Jaynie! Does that mean you’re on our side?”
She stops. “I don’t know, Shelley. What side would that be?” The squad gathers behind her. They are an array of silhouettes in the moonlight, the matte-black faces of their visors revealing nothing human, and suddenly I’m not sure I can tell them apart anymore. Not even Flynn. Interchangeable parts moved around the globe by an entity whose interests only partially align with our own.
“Why are you here, Jaynie? Why are you and Flynn part of this? It’s been a long time since you turned civilian.”
Flynn says, “We never turned civilian.”
Jaynie says, “The war got personal.”
Kanoa is right that I’ve got a problem with my wiring. A self-induced problem, it’s true, but it’s a problem all the same. As soon as Jaynie says personal, my brain kicks into overdrive and I know, I know, I know she means Delphi, something has happened to Delphi. A flush explodes across my skin, my heart races, and I have to talk around a sucking, empty absence when I ask, “Who?”
“You know who Yana Semakova is?”
Relief washes in. She sees it on my face; she doesn’t have to ask the reason. “Karin is okay. So far.”
“They got Rawlings,” Flynn growls.
Shit. Colonel Trevor Rawlings was a pompous old fart and we had our differences, but he wanted the best for the country and he was an integral part of missions that made a real difference in the world.
“Rawlings was first,” Jaynie says. “He was killed almost three weeks ago. We didn’t even know it was a hit. An allergic reaction. It happens, right? But after Yana, we knew. It’s a matter of time—”
“I’ve seen a list of victims.”
“It’s a matter of time until we all wind up on that list. I thought it was the Red—”
“Is it?”
She hesitates. Then says, “Don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be here. Abajian’s crew says they know who’s behind it—or they think they know.”
“That’s why you’re here, then? You’re going after the angel of death? That’s the mission’s target?”
“That’s the official target,” Jaynie affirms.
Giving me one more reason to despise Abajian. He hasn’t told me a damned thing about why I’m here, but he’s briefed Jaynie.
Of course he had to, to get her on board.
Jaynie adds, “It’s a mission that needs to be invisible, off-budget, done by nobody.”
“Meaning us,” Fadul says. “Existential Threat Management. Because dirt doesn’t stick to ghosts.”
“You still have the skills?” I ask Jaynie.
“I think Abajian was testing that tonight.”
Maybe.
She goes on. “I took a hint from Carl Vanda. Me and Flynn and Karin, we set up our own security company. We train all the time. Think of it as Cryptic Arrow 2. So, are you in? Or are you going to be hitchhiking to Berlin?”
I shrug. “It’s our mission only if the Red’s behind it—and if Abajian backs off.”
“Put your helmet on.”
I do it. Gen-com links me in. The squad’s icons line up, low in my field of view. Nine of us, because Escamilla and Dunahee are logged in too, though their status shows brown, not cleared for duty. I check the squad map. They’re at the command center.
“Looks like you’re our senior officer, ma’am.”
Fadul’s low, dangerous laugh reaches in over my helmet audio. “Shit, Shelley. Everyone knows Vasquez isn’t as crazy as you. Odds are she’ll live a lot longer.”
“That’s bullshit, Fadul. Vasquez thinks she’s going to Mars. How crazy is that?”
• • • •
The dead sisters encourage a long, bouncy stride that gets us to the command center in just a few minutes, even at a walk. The building looks dark and uninhabited, but as we approach, the front door buzzes and unlocks, spilling a slice of light onto the ground, green in night vision. Fadul goes in first. I follow her into the dimly lit interior, peeling off my helmet again as soon as I’m inside. A rigged MP is standing sentry in the lobby just like the first time I was here, a HITR held across his body.
Kanoa is waiting for us at the mouth of a shadowy hallway. Escamilla and Dunahee are with him, all three in combat uniforms. I cross the lobby, trade fist-bumps and hoo-yah’s with my soldiers, and then turn to Kanoa. “We need to get Abajian out—”
“Not here,” he cuts me off. “Not now. Not even over gen-com.” He raises his voice to address the squad. “Get out of your gear. Leave it—and your weapons—here. The MP will see that they’re secure.”
We do it, un-cinching from the dead sisters and then folding the frames into their compact-carry configuration. They go in neat formation against the lobby wall, with an armored vest draped over the frame, a helmet placed on top, and a HITR leaning against the right side. Seven sets in all.
We follow Kanoa down the hall to the lighted doorway of a briefing room. Inside, five rows of six seats face a slightly elevated table, with a podium on one side and a projection screen on the wall behind. Sitting at one end of the table is ETM 7-1’s traitorous intelligence liaison, Cory Helms. I don’t think I’ll be forgiving him anytime soon. A second chair, closer to the podium, is empty.
Captain Montrose is at the podium, consulting with Lieutenant Ashman, the intelligence officer who came to the house with orders to debrief our last mission. As we come in, she looks up, watching us with a skeptical gaze. “Please be seated,” she says.
A seat in the fourth row is already occupied. I slide in next to Leonid Sergun.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask him.
He’s wearing a black coat, his white hair freshly buzzed to stubble. He turns to look at me, eyes stern beneath unruly eyebrows. “I have been on site for this mission, renewing old friendships and making arrangements. Not in vain, I trust? Has your god assigned this mission to you?”
I have to admit, “I don’t know.”
The rest of the squad moves up front, taking most of the seats in the first and second rows. Fadul is the exception. She slides into row three, one seat diagonally in front of me.
Behind us, the door bangs shut and Kanoa strides past to a first-row seat.
I tell Leonid, “I took your suggestion. And I unsubscribed from direct updates.”
He raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t know what I mean. Not exactly. But he gives a short nod of approval before turning back to the podium. In a low voice, he says, “Captain Montrose has done most of the mission planning. He is a capable officer.”
“And Abajian?”
I hear a skeptical grunt. “I am sure he is good at politics.”
I smile, lean back, cross my arms over my chest. “Politics can be useful.”
“Very much so.”
“But so can a less-active leadership style.”
Fadul turns around, making no secret that she is following the conversation, her bright eyes amused.
“He doesn’t trust you, Shelley,” Leonid says in the same low voice. “He doesn’t trust ETM 7-1. But these soldiers gathered here, they have a reputation for doing impossible things, and he has been told to see that you take this mission.”
“Told by who? I thought this was a closed circle.”
“Abajian serves your president. It’s interesting, no? You don’t trust him. He doesn’t trust you. But the president of your country trusts you both. Who misjudges?”
Fadul smiles and turns to face front again. I scowl. I don’t have an answer for that. Up front, Captain Montrose leaves the podium to Lieutenant Ashman, who looks askance for a moment, as if she’s listening to a message delivered over her farsights.
Her gaze shifts back to her audience: eight of us from ETM, plus Jaynie and Flynn, and Papa. “Colonel Abajian has arrived and will be joining us shortly. In the meantime, I would like to open this briefing by emphasizing that we do not know the full reach and extent of the enemy’s penetration of our own command structure—and that is the reason for using irregular forces. This operation must remain secret and utterly invisible to everyone—”
The latch bangs on the door behind us. I jump hard, instinctively reaching for the pistol I’m not carrying as I rise to my feet, turning to face what’s coming.
The door swings open. Abajian strides in. We trade a glare. He heads to the front. I start to sit down again, but then I realize he’s not alone. Delphi comes in behind him. She catches the door, holds it open long enough to slip through, then lets it click shut.
She’s wearing a white pullover sweater and gray slacks. A coat is draped over her arm. Her blond hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her transparent farsights hardly obscure the bright blue of her eyes as they fix on me.
Up front, Lieutenant Ashman starts speaking again. “This operation,” she repeats, “must remain secret—” And then she interrupts herself. “Captain Shelley?”
I turn around. It’s like I’ve been staring at the sun and I need to look away.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“We are trying to begin this briefing, Captain. If you would join us?”
I sit down without looking behind me again. I think it was an illusion. A hallucination exploding in my wired brain.
“It is imperative,” Lieutenant Ashman says, “that this operation remain utterly invisible to everyone outside of this room, right up until the moment we launch. We can trust no one else, because anyone could be an operative working against the current administration and the democratic future of our country.”
The hallucination I’m suffering is not just visible. I hear her moving behind me as she takes a seat in the empty last row. It’s a tactile hallucination too. I flinch as her hand squeezes my shoulder. “Vasquez wants me as her handler,” she whispers.
I reach back and put my hand over hers, wondering how many times I can say I’m sorry.
But that’s not why she’s here.
She squeezes my shoulder one more time. Then she pulls away.
Calm, I tell my skullnet. Lock it down. And it obeys me, sending a cold, clear, analytical mood washing across my brain, a mood that reflects an ethic I’ve come to live by:
Mission first.
It’s not the Red whispering in my head. It’s just me.
Mission first.
Cerebral graffiti graven on my brain years ago.
• • • •
The first bit of the presentation is a video of President Monteiro.
She is pacing back and forth in front of a gray government-issue steel desk with a windowless, unpainted concrete wall in the background. Monteiro is in her fifties, Caucasian, with short blond hair and sharp brown eyes that have begun to look a little weary. Dressed in a white blouse and gray slacks, she looks thinner than she should be.
After two turns, she stops abruptly and returns the camera’s gaze. “I am recording this video in what I’m told is a secure bunker. No spies. No listening devices.” She smiles. “Nothing better to inflame the suspicions of your enemies than a well-kept secret, right?”
She begins pacing again, her hands on her hips, her lips half curled. “I will state the obvious and say that in my administration, mistakes have been made. When I accepted this position, I presumed that twenty-four years of army service had taught me a sufficient cynicism, but eighteen months serving as president of the United States has shown me I was not nearly cynical enough.” Again she turns to the camera.
“Wars are no longer fought just among nations. There are organizational layers enfolding the globe that have nothing to do with national borders. Some are clumsy, like the Shahin Council’s attempt to carry out Broken Sky. That doesn’t mean they’re easy to defeat. Not when they’re widespread, when their operations are as thin and fluid as smoke, when they don’t give a damn about who or what gets hurt.
“James Shelley, Ray Logan, and Alex Tran, you deserve the thanks of a grateful nation for your recent actions, but those actions must remain secret, so all I can offer you is my own thanks and gratitude.”
Without turning around, Fadul gives me a mocking thumbs-up. I know it’s mocking, because this is Fadul.
“But there are worse enemies,” Monteiro says. “There is a cabal in the world far more sophisticated than the plotters behind Broken Sky. They do not represent any specific country, creed, or philosophy. Their goal is to consolidate their own power by installing puppet governments around the world. To this end, they are waging a new style of war, a quiet war, a very careful war of disruption carried out on many fronts. The Arctic War is a symptom. So is Broken Sky. So is August-19.
“August-19 is the codename we’ve given to the quiet assassinations that have ravaged every large national government around the world—over two hundred sixty people dead so far in an ongoing assault against the world’s leadership, at least that part of it not already in the service of the enemy. The effect of this assault is pernicious, not just because of the loss of life, but also because of the fear and the suspicion that infects the survivors. Already, members of my administration are questioning one another’s loyalty simply because they remain alive. There are rumors of purges in other parts of the world. We haven’t gotten to that point yet, but if this goes on, we will.”
She squeezes her eyes briefly shut, shakes her head. But when she looks up again, her gaze is unwavering. “August-19 is the reason you are here today. I am entrusting this recording to Colonel Abajian so that I may personally ask all of you who are present to commit an illegal act—another illegal act—in the service of your country. I acknowledge this as a hypocritical request, given my own lectures to some here regarding the supremacy of the rule of law. But our Republic is under assault, as are so many other governments. Colonel Abajian will present the mission scenario. There will be no retribution, no arrests, no punishment if you choose not to accept it. I will only say that if word of what we are planning gets out before we are ready to launch, there will be hell to pay.”
The video ends abruptly in a black screen.
“Wipe it,” Colonel Abajian says. “And overwrite the file traces.”
• • • •
Lieutenant Ashman present
s an overview of the threat:
“The substance deployed so effectively by August-19 is a molecular weapon. It’s a kind of bioactive allergen—you may think of it as artificial pollen—tailored very specifically to induce a severe allergic reaction in a target individual, resulting in anaphylactic shock and consequent death by asphyxiation. Each attack deploys a slightly different version. To be so specifically effective, the target’s genetic makeup must be known ahead of time to the designer. Deployment is through air systems. Sometimes air-conditioning, sometimes by releasing the affective dust close to the target. Though the weapon is bioactive, it is not a living thing. It is not contagious and it cannot reproduce or spread beyond its initial release. Unless you are specifically targeted, you do not have reason to fear it.”
“Unless they modify the coding to go universal,” Leonid mutters.
Fadul glances over her shoulder, meeting my gaze. More than ever, I am sure: This is the target we’ve been hunting on our look-and-see missions.
“Why not deploy a more generalized weapon?” Lieutenant Ashman asks. “The implication, of course, is that August-19 could, but chooses not to, as a ‘humanitarian’ gesture.”
The propaganda angle is clear: Unpopular leaders can be selectively removed while the people they exploited are left unharmed, perhaps even cheering—at least until the system spins apart.
“We believe the weapon is the product of self-taught biohackers rather than formally educated geneticists, making the involved individuals harder to identify. They appear to be hired guns, motivated by money, not by any creed or philosophy.
“We have been hunting these individuals and their base of operations for over two months. We believe we have finally established the general location of the lab where the core of the work is being performed. This breakthrough was made as a result of information recovered during Arid Crossroad, specifically, from data contained in the farsights of Issam Salib. We have no doubt Mr. Salib was targeted for assassination because of his knowledge of locally integrated AIs, although we do not believe he was directly involved in August-19.