by Linda Nagata
I pivot to the right, wanting to get a look behind the stairwell. Jaynie moves in the opposite direction as Tran, Roman, and Fadul come down behind us. “No targets,” I say.
Jaynie responds, “Nothing here, either.” Her tone shifts. She sounds angry. “How important could this place be if August-19 doesn’t bother with overnight security?”
Good question—and it’s Delphi who answers her. “You’re there to find out.” Delphi is assigned to direct everyone downstairs while Kanoa handles the street fight. “Grab any data storage device you see. Take everything you can carry. In three minutes, you need to be back upstairs.”
We do it, ransacking shelves and drawers, and pulling chips out of the analytical equipment. Tran opens the fridge, revealing racks of neatly labeled vials. “What do we think about this?” he wants to know.
“Are those names on the labels?” Delphi asks as I move in. “Pull the racks out. We need to get a clear video record of everything.”
I help Tran move the racks to the countertop. There are sixty. Each can contain up to thirty vials, but most aren’t full.
I pull out one of the vials. It’s the size of my little finger, half full of white powder. There’s a paper label on it, printed with a tiny machine code and two lines of text, one in Arabic, one in Roman characters that spell a name, Gunther Howe. Not someone I’ve ever heard of, but as I inspect the rest of the rack, I find eight more vials bearing Gunther’s name. “Kanoa, who—”
“A European industrialist. Died about two weeks ago.”
“Not even encrypted,” Delphi says in disgust.
Jaynie has worked it out. “They were betting on Nashira to protect them—and for four months, that was a good bet.”
“It was a good bet tonight,” Tran says. “I think fucking Nashira called out the neighborhood watch. We were lucky we even got here.”
I put the vial back, check for other names in the same rack. I find several. Some are printed on only one vial. Some repeat two, three, four or more times. I don’t recognize any of the names. “Kanoa, is this making sense to you?”
“Dragons,” he says. “Politicians, journalists, bloggers, religious leaders.”
The influential, the inconvenient, the uncooperative.
“You don’t need to think about it now,” Delphi adds. “Just get the data and get out.”
But I do think about it. I think that every vial represents a potential hit. Nine vials for Gunther, but he’s already dead, so they must have gotten him the first time out. Some of the others, the ones with only one vial of white powder to their name—maybe they’re still alive because they’re too cautious, too careful to be hit … or maybe August-19’s agents are out in the world trying to get close to them even now.
Tran described the enemy’s strategy as a slow-motion decapitation of the world’s leadership. I think he was right. The Red has been hunting this lab for months, but Nashira kept it hidden until now.
“Shelley, you need to focus,” Kanoa warns.
Roger that.
I work faster, pulling out the vials, glancing at the labels. That’s all I need to do, because everything I see, everything Tran sees, is recorded by our helmet cams and relayed straight to Guidance. To Abajian. To the Red.
We work our way through the racks and then shove them back in the refrigerator. Roman unpacks two thermite grenades—we’ll burn the powder—while Jaynie and Fadul rig det cord and small blocks of C-4 around the lab equipment.
“We want to be done in thirty seconds,” Delphi warns.
“Shit,” Tran whispers. At first I think he’s objecting to the timeline. But then he holds out a vial for me to see. “It’s got Papa’s name.”
“Is there only one?”
He checks the rack. “Yeah.”
So, they’ve been after him. They’ve tried to hit him. “They haven’t gotten him yet.”
The next vial I look at is labeled Jayne Vasquez. I expel a slow breath and return it to the rack with exaggerated care. There are four other vials labeled with her name. “Jaynie, you need to get out of here. Go upstairs.”
Each formula of white powder is tailored to affect the immune system of a specific individual. If something happens and these vials break, Jaynie is gone.
“Did you find me?” she asks, still stringing det cord. She sounds amused.
Delphi doesn’t. “Finish the inventory, Shelley. Then we’ll burn it all.”
I hesitate a few seconds more, thinking it through. Semakova is already dead. Leonid and Jaynie are on the list. I have to ask, “Is your name here, Delphi?”
“Just finish the inventory. We need a complete list of the targets.”
It’s not just the targets who matter. The names that aren’t here are just as important. Monteiro will need to investigate those, the absent names, the names of those not marked for death.
I shove the last rack back into the refrigerator. “We’re done.”
“Shelley, Tran, Fadul, upstairs,” Jaynie says.
“No, you go,” I tell her. “My name’s not on these vials.”
“He’s right, Vasquez,” Delphi says. “Head out.”
They go, while I stay behind with Roman. We trigger the thermite grenades, shove them in with the vials, slam the fridge door shut, and bolt up the stairs as the searing hiss of a thermite fire melts the refrigerator from the inside out.
Upstairs, we find our position under heavy assault. There is a roar of continuous gunfire from the street. Rounds ping through the lobby, riddling the old plaster and generating a haze of white dust in the air.
Logan and his team have moved inside. Logan is crouched by the doorway, his HITR braced against his shoulder as he shoots rapidly at a target up the street. Flynn is belly-down across from him, squeezing the trigger of her HITR in careful single shots, conserving ammunition. Dunahee is standing at a narrow window alongside the door. The glass has been broken out of it and, like Flynn, he’s shooting methodically.
“Kanoa, sitrep,” I demand as I run in a crouch to join Dunahee.
“We are under heavy fire, but enemy forces are not coordinated. They identify as irregulars—a local militia along with independent fighters. Estimated thirty or more with light arms, occupying the surrounding buildings.”
Basically an angry mob, out for blood. Not that I blame them.
“Grenade,” Flynn announces, just as Kanoa links everyone back into gen-com.
There’s a boom and flash in the street. “Nice shot,” Dunahee says quietly.
I look past him, out the window. “We getting RPG fire?”
“We’ve knocked two shooters down, but you can be damn sure someone picked up their equipment.”
“How we doing on ammo?”
“We’ll last a while.”
I want to move out, but I am not CO of this squad. It’s Jaynie’s call.
I check for Escamilla on the squad map. He’s still upstairs. “Escamilla, get down here.”
“No, stay,” Jaynie says.
I’m distracted from argument by a flurry of bullets whining, snapping through the window and the open doorway. I see a repeated muzzle flash across the street and return fire, even before a targeting circle comes up on my visor. I don’t think I hit anything, but the shooter doesn’t repeat from the same position.
“Where’s the hellhound?” I ask over gen-com.
“Behind the door,” Logan answers. He squeezes off two shots. “Limited ammo, so it’s being held in reserve. Rooftop! ”
I raise my weapon in time to glimpse the head and shoulders of a shooter just visible behind a low wall surrounding the roof of the facing building. A targeting circle pops up. I cover it and fire at the same time as Dunahee. A spray of blood and brains, looking black in night vision, marks a hit as the shooter drops out of sight.
“Barriers are going up in the surrounding streets,” Kanoa says. “Old cars. Tires that can be set on fire. The enemy will try to trap you inside this block.”
We’re rigged,
and dressed in flame-retardant clothing. I don’t think the barriers can stop us, but they’ll slow us down, and we’ll make easy targets as we clamber over them.
“Jaynie, what’s going on? We need to move.”
Jaynie drops in beside me. Speaks over gen-com. My helmet audio amplifies her voice over the rattle of gunfire. “It’s a shooting gallery on that street. We’d have multiple wounded by the end of the block. So we’re going to stay in the building. Egress on the opposite side of the block.”
“Where the bomb went off?”
“Roger that. Seekers watching that side report less hostile activity.”
I consider it. I consider our situation. The lobby we’re defending is closed off from the rest of the first floor, which houses separate shops. “We go upstairs? Get out from the second floor?” I remember the explosion outside my dad’s apartment in Manhattan. “You sure that side of the building didn’t collapse?”
“It’s intact except for glass blown out of the windows. It’ll be easy to get out. I need you and Escamilla to go first. Clear our route. Get the doors open.”
I glance over my shoulder at Logan, Dunahee, and Flynn, still holding the lobby door. “Squad follows close. No one stays behind. Except the fucking hellhound. Let it cover our retreat.”
“That’s the plan. Now go.”
I hate leaving my soldiers under Jaynie’s command. It’s not that I don’t trust her. I do. But she’s not their CO. She doesn’t know them like I know them. I go anyway because it’s a reasonable plan and we need to move.
“Escamilla!”
I charge the stairs, climbing them in two bounds. “We’re moving out, down the hallway.”
It’s a plain hall—no decoration at all—almost grim in the green tint of night vision. The worn carpet looks black. The doors on either side are a darker color than the walls.
Escamilla takes point. I follow five meters behind him. Fadul comes up the stairs behind me. It takes only a few seconds to traverse the hallway. I hear babies crying and frantic arguments behind the apartment doors.
Escamilla reaches the last door. “Kick it in?”
“Roger that.”
He hammers the door with his footplate. It’s made of flimsy wood that splinters at the point of impact. He kicks it again, knocking out the latch just as I reach the door. I shove the muzzle of my HITR inside to get a look and a gun goes off. I hear a bullet punch through the broken door and Escamilla jerks back. “Fuck!” From inside, a child starts screaming.
I kick the door aside and drop low, ready to clear the room.
“Don’t shoot!” Kanoa orders.
I hold my fire, looking up at a young woman standing in a living room where the window has been blown out, the tables and lamps have been overturned, books and tablets spilled on the floor. She’s dressed in a blouse and loose pants, her thick black hair uncovered by a hijab. She’s holding a pistol in two hands, aimed at the door where my chest would be if I was standing up. A child, maybe three years old, is clinging to her leg and wailing. His shirt gleams with fresh blood; bloodstained white bandages hide wounds on his neck and the side of his head. I know without asking that he was cut by glass from the shattered window. There’s another child, a little girl holding an infant in her arms. She ducks out of sight into a second room.
“Put it down,” I tell the woman. I don’t think she speaks English, but she understands my tone. She understands I’m serious when I shift my aim to the boy at her side. She drops the gun. Drops into a crouch. Sweeps the boy up and hugs him, hiding his face against her shoulder. She looks at me with a killing gaze. I gesture at her to follow the girl into the other room. She moves cautiously, but she moves.
“You hit, Escamilla?”
“Mule-kicked.”
“Back me up.” I dart after the woman, catching her by the arm just as she’s passing through the doorway to the other room. She tries to wrench away, but I hold her, looking over her shoulder into a bedroom with a small bed, a closet, and a dresser covered with little vases and figurines and tiny jars of makeup and perfume all knocked over, with a shattered mirror on the floor. The little girl is crouched in a corner, surrounded by colorful pillows, hugging the wailing baby. “We’re clear,” I say, shoving the woman into the bedroom and closing the door. “Check the window.”
Footplates crunch against broken glass as we move together to bracket the window. “Coming in,” Fadul announces—a smart strategy to reduce the odds that we’ll get jumpy and shoot her.
“Make sure that side door stays shut,” I tell her.
“Yes, sir.”
The woman’s pistol is still on the floor. Fadul kicks it aside.
The street below is strewn with shattered glass reflecting shimmering light cast by the fires of two burning cars. The building behind the cars is partly collapsed, the first two floors exposed. I see bodies in the rubble. I hear people pleading. Wailing lamentations rise into the night. But I don’t see anyone still alive. The battle AI finds no targets.
“Go, Escamilla. Fadul, move up.”
Escamilla takes a few seconds to reload. Then he uses his footplate to sweep away shards of glass along the windowsill. Fadul moves in as he climbs through. Together we keep watch over the street as Escamilla drops to the pavement below. No one shoots at him, but in the distance I hear a shout of excitement, of discovery. Someone has seen us. Reported our position. Probably posted a photo on the locally preferred social media.
“Go, Fadul.”
She scrambles outside, dropping to the ground just as Jaynie speaks over gen-com. “I’m triggering the explosives.”
The concussion follows in less than a second, a low swift boom! The floor of the old building shudders more than I expect. Hairline cracks dart up the plaster walls. The woman in the bedroom cries out in terror; the kids wail. But the building stands. It was a measured blast, enough to destroy the lab equipment, not the building itself.
By this time, Roman is with me at the window and Tran is coming into the apartment. Outside, two gunshots echo between the buildings. Escamilla is across the street; Fadul is below me. Neither cries out, swears, goes down. We’re okay. Then more shots. I think they’re coming from the roof above us. Escamilla confirms it when he turns, aims his HITR high, and shoots two short bursts. Someone screams.
“Roman, go.”
“Enemy knows your position,” Kanoa warns as I gesture for Tran to follow Roman out the window. Flynn shows up, so I send her too. “Militia of twenty-two about to round the corner at the east end of the block.”
“Cover the east end of the street!” I shout.
I lean out the window to get a line of fire.
It’s not a militia that charges around the corner; it’s a mob. There is no discipline, no organization to their attack. They are all men, dressed in street clothes, clutching assault rifles which go off almost on their own, spewing bullets in random directions. The leaders gesture at those behind them to seek cover, but it’s too late for that. We hit them with a fusillade of gunfire.
On some higher, abstract level, I know these people should not be our enemies. Every kill we make tonight is a wasted life, gone for nothing—but nuance doesn’t work in the middle of a firefight. My only goal now is to get my squad out alive, and we’ll do what we have to do to achieve that.
At least three of the civilian militia fall. The rest pull back, or try to, but they run into their friends who are still coming in from behind. More go down. Some of them panic, but others stand their ground and return fire. I think Flynn is hit. She staggers and then dives for the cover of a chunk of concrete rubble. Tran and Roman keep shooting in a calm, steady rhythm, picking off the enemy or driving them behind cover.
“Coming behind you, Captain!” Dunahee calls.
I clear the window, gesturing with the muzzle of my HITR. “Climb out.” I glance at Flynn’s icon. It’s shifted to yellow.
“Go, Shelley!” Jaynie says as she charges into the room. “Follow Dunahee.”
“Where’s Logan?”
He pops in through the apartment door. “Right here. Go.”
Dunahee is already out, so I squeeze through the window. Drop to the ground. My dead sister absorbs the shock. I turn to rejoin the fray—but the defenders have withdrawn behind the building. The battle AI gives me a targeting circle anyway, placing it over an upper-story window a block away. A live target: I see a muzzle flash as I fire. And then Jaynie and Logan drop down to the street, and we are ready to go.
“Logan, take point!” Jaynie barks.
Any hope of a quiet withdrawal ended in the first two minutes of this mission. The goal now is to get to a safe house, ditch our gear, and hope that Papa can evacuate us as anonymous civilians.
A projected path pops up in my visor. Logan moves out on it at a fast run, passing close to one of the burning cars. Escamilla follows a few steps behind him. The rest of us advance in teams, covering each other. Jaynie is paired with Fadul. Roman and Dunahee are a few meters behind. I go last, teamed up with Tran and Flynn. Bullets chase us. Not many, but they pass way too close. I hear them whizzing past my head, bouncing off concrete walls.
It’s a long block. The path directs us to turn right at the end of it, onto a wide cross street. I’m happy to do it since it will get us out of the line of fire. But as Logan reaches the corner, the path changes directions, diving straight ahead.
“Barricades are going up,” Kanoa says. “We’ve got armed defenders organizing on all sides.”
Escamilla stops at the corner, covering Logan as he charges across the exposed street. Shooters are active in multistory apartments on both sides, but none seem expert. Jaynie and Fadul take over, punching rounds through windows where activity is detected. There’s no way to know what’s behind those windows; all we can do is shoot when the battle AI designates a target.
Escamilla crosses the street, followed by Roman and Dunahee. Then Jaynie and Fadul move.