by Linda Nagata
The intersection is hot, and we’ve still got pressure behind us. As I send my team across I’m expecting the neighborhood militia to press their attack, but instead there’s a pause in the shooting. It’s like my audio has been suppressed. It’s weird enough that I look back—to see the squad dog standing guard in the ruined street. It’s positioned in the concrete rubble so it’s not fully exposed, but it’s visible to the militia at the east end of the block. It’s not shooting—not yet—and neither are they.
I think it’s spooked them. It’s covering our retreat by intimidation alone—but that can’t last. In a minute, maybe less, someone will bring an RPG to remove the threat.
We need to be long gone by then.
“Go, Shelley!” Jaynie says.
I take off after the squad, bounding across the intersection. For the scant seconds I’m in the open I glance up and down the street. In both directions, I glimpse crowds. They’re a couple hundred meters away, gathered around burning barricades that are sending clouds of black smoke boiling into the night sky. I get past the intersection, but it doesn’t look much better up ahead. Seventy meters away another barricade is going up, old cars being pushed into the street. Defensive fire starts buzzing through the air.
“Twenty-five meters ahead,” Kanoa says. “Cut left through the alley. You’ll have to go over the fence, but it’ll get you to the next block.”
The projected path shows the way.
This is a new neighborhood, composed of four-story housing projects, four buildings to a block, each identical to its neighbors. The blocks are divided by wide streets. Narrow alleys run between the buildings.
Logan moves out first, with the squad following at tight intervals. We are camouflaged so that to an unenhanced eye, we must appear as shadows in motion, the suggestion of a presence passing through the solid shadows cast by walls and the buildings along the streets. But that’s enough to make us targets. Rounds zip through the air, but most pass over our heads or skip along the apartment walls.
Logan turns, darting into the designated alley. Escamilla follows. Dunahee is next, but he stumbles. Roman catches his arm, steadies him. They move together around the corner. Jaynie and Fadul follow, then Flynn and Tran.
I go last. That lets me keep an eye on every soldier in the squad, but I don’t linger. The rate of fire is picking up. As I cut around the corner a bullet hits the masonry, sending a spray of shrapnel against my visor. Another cracks into the back of my helmet, but it’s almost spent and doesn’t rattle me too badly.
The alley we’re in is barely two meters wide, with a chain-link fence at the back dividing it from the other buildings on the block. Logan is already over the fence. Escamilla jumps down beside him. They continue to the opposite end of the alley while the rest of us climb over.
“Straight through,” Kanoa says. “Across the street and into the next alley. Don’t slow down.” He can see all the streets, the lanes, the alleys, the rooftops. That lets him count down the time we have to cross the street before the pursuing militia catches up. He can even see inside some of the buildings using the seekers that follow us through the street.
“Target,” he tells me. “Forty degrees.”
Too bad the neighborhood has its own surveillance network.
I look up, see the targeting circle, cover it, and squeeze off a burst—but I’m not fast enough. A grenade has already been lobbed. It goes off in the street with a concussion that sends Flynn diving for the next alley.
“Go!” Kanoa says, and Tran and I sprint to catch up.
The projected path takes us through the next alley, across the next street. We take intermittent fire. In the brief periods of silence between the shooting, my audio pickups feed me fragments of conversation in Arabic, grabbed from the apartments overhead. The fragments are automatically translated and echoed in English, but they don’t make any sense to me. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this neighborhood is full of people. I don’t have to see them to know they’re looking for us, talking about us, working together to track us, using phones and farsights to report our position—to who? To the L-AI that watches over this district?
Probably not. Nashira is a security AI, trained to manipulate data. That’s how it hid the existence of the lab. It’s not a battle AI.
In the buildings ahead of us, lights go on as residents wake to the noise of shooting—and go off again when they get word of what’s going on.
“Kanoa,” I whisper, “do they have a drone? Can I take it out?”
“They’re using seekers.”
Just like us.
I can’t shoot down a flock of seekers. They’re small and fly so low that any shot I take risks injuring noncombatants, and seekers are so cheap that backups are probably being held on standby, ready to launch if the first wave gets taken down.
It’s not going to be easy to shake our pursuers and just slip away.
“The only way we’re going to get out of here,” I whisper, relying on my audio system to boost the volume to a perceptible range, “is to convince the local militia it’s not worth their lives to pursue us.”
“Roger that,” Kanoa says, his voice an ominous dead calm.
• • • •
We reload, and then we double back through the maze of alleys as Kanoa tries to get us to the nearest safe house. From all the time spent in simulation, I know we’re just a few blocks away from it, but between the barricades, the pursuing militia, and defensive fire directed at us from the neighborhood apartments, we haven’t been able to get close. And I’ve got three wounded soldiers, their icons showing yellow.
I call a time-out.
“Jaynie! We need to stop and treat.”
It’s a dangerous choice. We don’t want to get trapped. But Dunahee is bleeding from a thigh wound. Roman’s been shot in the hand and has lost a little finger. Flynn is cut up from shrapnel.
Jaynie agrees with me. So we break into a cinderblock store and hunker down. Outside, sirens are wailing, and I hear a distant rumbling of approaching helicopters. There’s shooting on at least three fronts. “What the hell is going on out there, Kanoa? All this shooting can’t be directed at us.”
“Peripheral fighting’s erupted.”
“Ah, fuck.”
“The local militias have been slugging it out for years.”
“We’ve started another war.”
“We did what we had to do.”
I think August-19 chose this site for their facility not just because Nashira is here, but also because they knew that any provocation in this neighborhood would meet sudden and severe retaliation. It’s a cold-blooded but effective strategy, to hide behind a hair-trigger civilian militia. No need to pay for an army and the facility stays secret, hidden in plain sight. I don’t think our intelligence team understood that when they sent us in here.
A flurry of shots whizzes in. “Do not return fire,” Jaynie orders in a stern undertone. “Let them wonder if we’re really here.”
• • • •
It takes just a few minutes to get Flynn and Roman glued up and stable. Dunahee worries me more. The wound in his thigh isn’t life-threatening, but he’s got a couple of serious dents in his helmet. “You cross-eyed?” I ask him.
“Maybe.”
If he’s got a concussion, he could go down without warning. “Roman, I want you to stick close to Dunahee.”
“Yes, sir.”
We redistribute the remaining ammo. We’re getting ready to go when Kanoa checks in with me again. “Mission update.”
Our goal has changed. We’re not trying to reach the safe house anymore. Out beyond this maze of housing projects is an oil storage field. Behind the tanks is a wide-open asphalt tarmac, laid out for future expansion. “Get there,” Kanoa says. “You’ll get picked up.”
“How? By who?”
He hesitates. “A local security company. They’ll be bringing in Z transports.”
Chinese helicopters, flown by mercenaries. The US Navy is just off the
coast with a fleet of gunships, but to preserve the anonymity of this operation, we’re going to be handed over to an outfit that works for the highest bidder. Hoo-yah.
“I hope they don’t get a better offer before they get us out of here.”
“I hope they haven’t gotten a better offer already.”
That shuts me up. For Kanoa to say something like that during an active operation—he’s got to be worried.
“Eyes open,” he adds.
“Roger that.”
• • • •
Jaynie gets the news from her own handler. That would be Delphi—a thought that stirs a spike of regret. But it’s better this way.
Jaynie makes the announcement to the squad. “We’re heading out of this district. It’s just a few more blocks. Once we’re clear of the projects, we should leave the fighting behind. After that, we run an easy klick and a half to the pickup point. We’re going to be okay.”
She doesn’t mention the private security company. Neither do I.
A new route posts on the squad map. It shows our position, and known positions of the enemy. There’s a significant firefight several blocks north, but that doesn’t concern us—and it hasn’t distracted the militias that are hunting us. They know where we are. They’re setting up barricades to contain us, and though the map doesn’t show it, my guess is they’re bringing in heavier weapons. We will have to get past them, out of the projects, over a canal, through a neighborhood of family compounds, and across a wider canal before we reach the pickup site. It feels like a long way.
Jaynie sketches a plan. There are forces outside, waiting for us to emerge. We intend to take them by surprise. “All right,” Jaynie says as the map winks out of sight. “Let’s do this.”
We answer with a quiet “Hoo-yah!”
“Execute.”
I kick open the back door. Across the street is another of the endless identical project buildings, ugly boxes to hold people with nowhere else to go.
The open door inspires shouts and wild gunshots that come nowhere near us. Flynn and Dunahee lean out long enough to fire grenades into the air above the street—a double burst intended to make everyone duck. Logan and Escamilla step outside into a rain of shrapnel, firing two more grenades, this time at a pair of black pickup trucks waiting at the end of the street with gunmen standing in the truck beds.
Fadul and I are only a step behind. We cover the opposite end of the street, working through a series of targeting circles in a determined effort to convince any would-be shooters to keep the fuck down.
“Move out!” Jaynie barks. “Go, go, go!”
Fadul stays with me. We keep shooting until everyone is out and then we turn and run like hell past the wreckage of the two pickup trucks. Bloody, burned men are strewn across the asphalt along with their weapons. Most are still alive. When one reaches for a rifle, I kick it away and keep running, chased by an escalating volume of fire.
I’m midstride when a burst stitches my pack. The force knocks me off balance. I stumble against a brick wall, which explodes in front of my face when it’s hit by the next flurry of bullets.
Fadul is in front of me. She turns to shoot at whoever is shooting at me. I pivot and back her up. Tran joins us. It takes maybe twenty seconds to persuade the shooters to back off. Then we turn and run as the air vibrates with the thunder of a charging gunship.
“Get under cover!” I shout over gen-com. But there is no cover. Not in the street. We have to shelter in a building.
“Inside, inside!” Jaynie orders, bounding for the front door of the nearest building. Logan and Escamilla meet her there, training their weapons on the door as Jaynie kicks it open. They charge in. There’s no return fire.
Roman goes in next with Dunahee. Flynn is right behind them as the gunship roars in, low and fast. I’m not going to make it to the door. So I drop into a crouch against the wall, hoping my high-tech camouflage will hide me. That’s how I get a good look at the gunship. It’s not hunting us. It passes our position a block away, all lights off, but there is enough ambient light that night vision lets me see its insignia. “Iraqi Army,” I whisper over gen-com.
I can’t tell for sure, but I think it sweeps in over the bombed street beside the lab. Gunfire greets it. It answers with heavier-caliber fire.
“Holy shit,” Fadul whispers. She’s hunkered down a couple of meters away from me. “They’re shooting their own people?”
Tran says, “Maybe Abajian sent it. Maybe he convinced the IA it’s an armed revolt.”
I’m thinking something else: that it wasn’t Abajian who persuaded the IA.
Dunahee says it for me. “Maybe it was the Red.”
“I don’t care who it was,” Jaynie says. “Let’s move.”
We hit the street again, stampeding toward the perimeter of the projects. Someone takes a couple of shots from out of a window. “Kanoa, target?”
“Let it go. It’s a kid.”
• • • •
The route takes us right, then left, then right again, across streets and through alleys—and the gunfire directed against us quickly drops off. The streets ahead are open. It gets so quiet I can hear the faint, insect buzz of seekers scouting the street.
It’s like we’ve stepped over some boundary, invisible to us, that marks a different neighborhood, one where people have decided their best option is to hide the children in closets and behind mattresses, and hunker down while we pass through.
It’s a good choice.
Without resistance, we move fast. We only need to get past three more buildings to put the projects behind us and reach the first canal.
I start to think that maybe we’re going to make it, but Escamilla kills that hope when he says, “I got a bad feeling.”
And Logan: “I got it too. Let’s get off this street.”
Jaynie says, “Shelley, confirm?”
I can’t confirm it. I took out my receiver so I don’t get premonitions anymore. But I trust my squad. “We need to move.”
“On it,” Kanoa says. “Backtrack. Take the lane.”
The route shifts, rolls back behind me, and then cuts into a lane between two buildings. “Move!” I shout, turning, stepping out of the street, taking a position at the corner of the lane that lets me watch the facing buildings.
Tran is closest. He jumps after me, taking a defensive position a few meters away and behind a parked car. The others are still scrambling when I see movement in several windows on the third floor across the street.
I should have suspected the silence. The seekers I heard were not ours.
“Take cover!” Kanoa barks. “Movement on all—”
I’m already shooting when a torrent of gunfire erupts from windows on both sides of the street. Escamilla is hit in the first volley. His icon blazes on the periphery of my vision, bright red as he goes down. Flynn gets hit too. A plume of blood flies from her shoulder. The hit leaves her staggering, but she still manages to retreat into the lane. Her icon stays yellow. Dunahee spasms, stumbles. But like Flynn, he keeps his feet, and with Roman’s help, he too makes the lane.
Fadul is next, bounding past me. But as soon as she’s in the lane, she turns and steps out again, firing a grenade. The concussion rattles the street and slows the assault, giving Logan a respite as he bends down, setting an arm hook around the shoulder strut of Escamilla’s dead sister. Jaynie assists him, and together they drag Escamilla into the shelter of the lane while Tran and I hammer positions on the building across the street.
Fadul crouches at my feet and starts shooting too. “How the fuck,” she whispers between bursts, her voice amplified by gen-com. “How the fuck did these fuckers … fucking know … our route?”
Fair question. This is the most concentrated firepower we’ve faced. More than we dealt with in the first block outside the lab or the fusillade as we left the shelter of the store. It’s an ambush, and it had to have been in place for many minutes or our seekers would have detected the presence of gun
men assembling in the buildings. If Escamilla hadn’t spoken up when he did, we might have been too far from the lane, and all of us would have been shot down in the street.
“Fadul!” Jaynie snaps. “Move out. You’re on point. Kill anything that gets in your way.”
“Roger that, ma’am!”
Fadul spins away. Jaynie sends the rest of the squad after her. I cover the next targeting circle, and the next, ever aware of Escamilla’s red icon, willing it not to shift to black.
Jaynie says, “Tran. Shelley. Let’s go.”
“Right behind you.”
I give them a few seconds to move out and then I turn and follow.
The apartments flanking this lane rise in windowless brick faces, but the lane is wider than the alleys we’ve been through. There’s enough room that a line of cars is parked on one side. I’ve passed the first few when Kanoa speaks in a low, urgent voice. “Take cover between the cars.”
Tran is a few meters ahead of me. He ducks out of sight, while I drop into a crouch between two little economy sedans.
“Seven militia, with more behind them, are gathering at the start of the lane. Shelley, you and Tran need to hold them off. Give us time to move the wounded.”
“Roger that. Tran?”
“Yes, sir! They shall not pass.”
I glance at the squad map. Fadul has paused in her advance, like she’s waiting for the squad to catch up. They’re not far behind her. Flynn, despite her injuries, is helping Logan to handle Escamilla; Jaynie and Roman are shepherding Dunahee.
I dismiss the map. “Kanoa, you got video of the street?”
He puts a feed on my visor’s display. The perspective is from near the rooftop. It shows a crowd of gunmen gathering just outside the lane. Two of them ease around the corner, crouching behind the cars.
“Hold your fire, Tran,” I whisper, concentrating on staying calm, cold, analytical. It’s become my default state.
The two whisper together. One leans out, looks down the lane like he’s trying to figure out where we are. I don’t think he has night vision. I wait. I want them to take their time, think about what they’re doing. The longer they take, the more time the squad has to reach the canal. Two more join the first pair. Outside the lane, another talks on a phone. He wants a report on our exact position.