by Linda Nagata
“Target on the rooftop,” Kanoa says, clearing the video from my visor.
I look up, cover a targeting circle, and shoot. There’s a scream. The shooter drops his rifle. It almost hits me, while he falls backward, out of sight.
Tran opens fire down the lane, hitting a guy in the forehead as he peers around a corner to check out the action. Two of the men crouched behind the cars lean out to try some test shots. One of their rounds ricochets off the brick, drilling into a parked car and setting off an alarm. Another bites into pavement, kicking up grit.
I shoot under the cars, which flushes the men into the open. Tran hits one, sending him sprawling. He clips another, who ducks out of sight. The last two flee back around the corner.
“Fall back,” Kanoa says.
I pivot out from between the cars, and run. Tran is ahead by several meters, moving fast, when Kanoa orders me down again. I crouch between a new set of cars while bullets fly past, zipping, pinging, cracking into the vehicles, shattering their windows and punching holes in their sides. Someone in the militia uses my trick, shooting under the vehicles. Two rounds ricochet off my robot legs, sending jolts of pain into my hips, but the legs hold out.
I wait for a lull. Then I stick my HITR out past the sheltering body of the car, letting the muzzle cams take a look at things. It’s busy out there. The battle AI posts targeting circles. I cover them and let the AI pull the trigger. It squeezes off a series of single shots that put two militia on the ground and send two more diving for cover.
As soon as the last one is down, I go.
My route gleams at my feet. It’s a path straight through to the end of the lane, where a wide cross street leads to the canal. “Where’s Tran?” I gasp.
Kanoa answers, “Around the corner.”
I can’t believe Tran has reached the end of the lane already. I wish I could run that fast. I run as hard as I can, all too aware I’ve got no cover while I’m moving. It’ll be just seconds before the shooting starts again.
I don’t want to take a bullet in my back.
I want to get the fuck out of this city.
A flurry of shots erupts behind me. At least one pings off my helmet. A few slam into my pack. I don’t slow down.
Then Kanoa is yelling at me, “Why aren’t you on the route?”
“I am on the route!” It’s glowing beneath my feet.
“You’re not! You missed your turn. You should have—” He stops in midsentence, while I drop into another gap between cars. I lean out and shoot, just to let the enemy know I’m still dangerous. “This doesn’t make sense,” Kanoa says. “Shelley, I’m looking at a copy of your display. What you’re seeing, it’s not right. That’s not the path you’re supposed to see.”
“So fucking fix it!”
“Updating.”
I fire a few more rounds and then eye the squad map until it expands. It shows my soldiers nowhere near me. They left the lane earlier, turned toward the canal. They’re already at the water. “Shit.”
My shoulders heave, my hands shake, sweat is streaming down my face, but my mind is calm, machinelike. “I can’t go back.”
“No. You have to get to the end of the lane. There’s no other way out.”
Okay.
I fire a few more shots. Swap out the magazine. It’s a long way to the end of the lane.
At the start of this mission we were instructed to limit our impact, but war is not something you can control. It never goes the way the planners say it will. I shift my finger to the second trigger. A well-placed grenade could help me close up this lane, delay the pursuit for at least a few seconds.
I squeeze.
Nothing happens.
I check the grenade magazine. Still two left. I try again.
Nothing happens—and I’m taking a lot of fire. Bullets are pinging off the cars around me, bouncing along the walls, skipping on the ground. I try to return fire, just to discourage the militia, but when I squeeze the first trigger, nothing happens. It’s like my HITR’s been unregistered, like I’m holding another soldier’s weapon.
“Kanoa!” My heart pounds about ten times in the next two seconds. “Kanoa, you there?”
No answer.
I check the icons on my visor’s display. They show me still linked to gen-com, but I’m not getting through.
“Jaynie, you there? Answer me! Logan?”
Nothing, though I still see them on the map. They’re already across the canal and moving in among the houses. It’s like they don’t even know I’m missing.
I push the HITR around the back of the car again, using the muzzle cams to get another look down the lane. There’s no reason that should work, but it does. So I’m still linked to the weapon. The feed from the muzzle cams pops up on my display—it shows me figures shooting from behind the cover of parked cars—but I can’t shoot back. The trigger is dead.
My system is compromised.
I’m compromised. Isolated.
And I know what’s happened. The L-AI that monitors this district, the one that’s called Nashira—it’s not a battle AI, but it’s adaptable. It must have penetrated my electronics. Maybe it hacked the Red, or maybe it just took over the task of managing me. Isn’t that what Issam told me in Budapest? That tasks tend to get transferred to a locally dominant AI?
It’s compromised my communications and my primary weapon. At least my skullnet is safe. It can’t reach into my head. But I need to get the fuck out of here before it hits my dead sister. I sling the HITR over my shoulder. Then I pull my pistol. It doesn’t have linked electronics, so it should work.
I do not want to be taken prisoner. Just a few hours ago the people of this city were not the enemy, but our raid changed that.
I fire two quick shots down the lane, spin out, and run.
A roar of gunfire erupts behind me. Bullets slam my helmet, hammer my pack, ping off my dead sister. One bites at my thigh, another at my arm.
It’s a fucking long way to the end of the lane, and it’s not freedom waiting there for me. It’s more militia, three or four soldiers peering out at me from behind the cover of the buildings. I slow down, wondering why they’re not shooting. Then my footplate brushes the dusty surface of a deep pothole—and the ground blows up. The frame of my dead sister twists through the air, taking me with it. I’m weirdly conscious the whole time—of the dust, the explosive smell, the tumbling lights of distant apartments—and then a plunge back to earth, ending with a metal-on-metal concussion as I slam sideways across the hood of a car.
The weirdest part is the silence that follows. I don’t know if I’ve gone deaf, if my helmet has failed, or if time has stopped, but I don’t hear any shooting at all. No voices. No sirens. No helicopters. Not even my own heartbeat.
Nothing.
It’s as if the war has passed me by.
Too bad it doesn’t last.
• • • •
Time kick-starts with the blunt heat of a gun muzzle pressed hard under my chin. When the trigger gets pulled, a bullet will jump into my brain case. Someone speaks an order I can’t understand. A lot of people are speaking. An angry burr of unintelligible conversation as many hands work to loosen the cinches that strap me to my dead sister. I try to move, but it’s already too late. My arm comes loose from the frame. Someone grabs my wrist, wrenches it back. The muzzle presses deeper into my chin. My helmet comes off. The straps on my pack are released.
They pull me to my feet. I wrench my arm away from whoever is holding it and reach for one of the grenades I carry in my vest. But there’s a problem. I don’t actually have a right foot anymore. The robot leg is gone, blown off at the knee where a quick release was designed into it to minimize damage to the joint. The trouser leg on that side is shredded and soaked with blood. My left foot is still there, but it’s bloody too, looking like a human foot with the flesh blown off.
I collapse, but arms catch me halfway. I struggle, but there are too many hands. They strip me of my pistol holster, my armo
red vest, my combat jacket. They take me down to my T-shirt, and then they cut that away, like they want to make sure I’m human underneath. Who can blame them, with the titanium bones of my left foot showing? They strip my trousers off too, and then I’m naked, bleeding from both thighs, but it doesn’t hurt and I don’t ask for mercy and they don’t offer it. Why should they?
The chaos of angry voices quiets as they contemplate my artificial bones. In the lull, other sounds speak to my consciousness: a distant gun battle, the growling thunder of helicopters, and Delphi’s voice—I think that part is my imagination—telling me, “Hold on. We’re coming.” The crowd recovers its outrage. There is wailing and furious denunciations. These are bereft fathers, grieving friends. A rope goes around my neck.
Who can blame them?
• • • •
They could drag me by the rope, but they don’t. They walk me to the end of the lane, as well as I can be walked on one foot, two strong men holding onto my arms. Odors assault me: sweat and blood and gunpowder and rot. From the end of the lane, it’s a short half block to the canal and a little footbridge that crosses the stagnant water. The bridge is not very high, but if they keep the rope short that won’t matter.
They want to justify themselves. It feels like an unnecessary formality to me, but they’re civilians. They lecture me in Arabic. Tear-streaked faces and clenched fists. My overlay tries to translate, but the voices are too mixed, too chaotic. One man screams at me in English. “Why did you come here? Why?”
We came because we needed to raid the lab, to find out who was behind the assassinations, so we could target them next and prevent the collapse of President Monteiro’s administration, preserving a last hope of democracy in the United States. That’s why your children, your brothers, your sisters, your friends are dead.
But I don’t say any of that shit out loud, because I don’t understand it either.
They secure the rope to the bridge’s railing. They secure my hands behind my back. I struggle hard enough that it takes five of them to lift me up over the rail and drop me on the other side.
• • • •
The drop is too short to snap my neck.
I kick and twitch above the putrid water. Everything is a blur. I can’t breathe; I can’t swallow. I can’t scream. My heartbeat rattles my bones.
Someone transfers gen-com to my overlay. I see the icons switch on, though they’re all a blur. Kanoa speaks to me. “Use your foot, Shelley. It’s not tied down. Try to reach the understructure of the bridge.”
I try it, but I’m hanging from my fucking neck and the rope just pulls tighter. Drool spills out between my swollen lips. Or maybe it’s blood. It splashes in the water below. The splashing gets louder. For a second, I think rescue has come, that Logan must have waded out into the canal to catch me when Jaynie or Tran cuts the rope.
Then I realize the splashing is just my robot foot kicking spastically in the water … and I’m not sure anymore I even heard Kanoa’s voice—how could I, over the roaring in my ears? A roaring that gets louder with every wild, useless beat of my heart until Hell opens up and I drop, plunging through a wall of flame—
• • • •
—into water.
The transition shocks me into an animal panic. I roll, hitting debris. And then I discover the mud-covered concrete bottom of the canal. I push off, twisting into the air. I’m propped up on my robot knee and the empty joint of my other leg, in water that barely reaches my waist. The rope is still around my neck, still tight, but I can sip air past it. I arch my neck, and that loosens the rope a little more. I can’t see much. Just fire, reflected in water, and dense smoke in the air. I think the bridge is burning. I hear the ratcheting thunder of a gunship making a tight turn, the beat of its blades echoing off buildings. I don’t want to be here if it’s coming this way.
My hands are still tied behind my back, so I shake my head to clear my eyes. That loosens the rope a little more and lets me see a body floating face down in the water beside me, illuminated in firelight. Beyond it is the concrete bank of the canal and the smoldering ruin of the bridge. I push past the body, crawling on my artificial knees. As the gunship roars in, I collapse on the bank, hoping I’ll be taken for just another fresh corpse.
A machine gun hammers—multiple bursts—but they’re not shooting at me. I stay down until the gunship turns back over the city. Then I wriggle out of the water and creep on my robot knees up the concrete bank.
It’s surprisingly quiet. People must have run when the gunship came. I don’t see anyone.
I do hear someone crying.
Farther away, there’s more noise: frantic shouts, wails, helicopter engines, car horns. Shooting.
A path pops up, projected in my overlay. It’s a different color than the projected paths I’m used to seeing. This one is red. The dark red of a cyber presence bleeding out of the Cloud. A blood road.
I tell myself it’s just Nashira, come to fuck with me again—but I don’t believe that.
Never trust the Red—but when was I any good at taking advice?
I follow the new path, stumping along on my knees, fighting to keep my balance and to breathe, all the time working my hands to loosen the rope that binds them. It’s a long, exhausting journey, but I finally make it back to the lane.
The buildings are dark. I hear someone—a man—screaming his outrage on one of the upper floors. It’s a one-way conversation, like he’s talking on a phone. But no one’s outside and thank God for that. I crawl into the lane, following the path to the crater where the IED went off. The path ends there.
I sit for a minute, hiding in the shadow of a car with a hole blasted in its door, fighting to get enough air past the restriction around my throat so that I don’t pass out. Past my own constricted gasps, I listen to the percussive racket of ongoing firefights from at least two fronts, and to gunships blazing away at targets around the city. The gunships must be going after anything that looks like resistance.
They’ve already been through here and moved on. I hope my squad got out okay. I hope they made it to the pickup point and that they’re all still alive.
Eventually I notice that the car’s shattered door has a sharp metal edge. I use it to work through the rope that’s binding my hands. I open up a few cuts in my palms and on my forearms, but what the hell. I get my hands free. Then I get the rope off my neck. My neck is swollen, bruised. It hurts like hell and I can barely swallow. Not sure if I can talk.
Fuck it.
Time to find my missing leg. I know it’s here. Why else would the Red bother to lead me back to this place?
I crawl around the rough paving until I see it, underneath the next car in line. To reach it, I have to get belly-down, naked against the grit. I pull the leg out, blow grit off the end, and lever it into the knee joint. It locks right in. The toes flex. The knee bends. It works fine. “Joby,” I whisper in a voice perfect for the wounded antagonist of some slasher flick, “you are a fucking genius … and holy shit it hurts to talk.”
So I shut up.
I recover my ragged trousers and then my T-shirt. The shirt is filthy and shredded. I use it anyway, to mop the blood and sweat from my face and arms and chest, and then I toss it away. My jacket is gone. So is my pack with some of the electronics we confiscated from the lab. And of course there is no sign of my weapons or my rig.
I scan my overlay. I remember gen-com switching on when I was hanging from the bridge, and Kanoa’s voice … but I’m not linked in now. I try to fix that. I send the link, but it doesn’t work. The link gets rejected. I check my network icon—green—and try again, but I don’t get anywhere. Before I can get seriously worried, a document pops open in my overlay:
Mission Briefing
Codename: Kingmaker Prime
Target: private Basra security and surveillance system designated “Nashira”
Objective: breach secure facility and destroy core hosting platform
Timetable: mission to be un
dertaken immediately and completed before dawn.
Additional: interactive map attached. Details to follow.
It’s a joke, isn’t it?
I want to believe it’s a joke.
The interactive map unfolds. It charts my position in the surrounding terrain, using a glowing red line to mark out a route to the target, three kilometers to the southwest. With no input from me, the map changes format. It expands and rolls over, superimposing itself on the terrain around me. The route begins here. It begins with me. I’m sitting at the start of the blood road, a projected path to coax me back out of the lane.
I stare at the route in exhaustion. I close my eyes, but the blood road is still there. Guess I should have known the Red didn’t intervene in my execution out of gratitude for past service.
I get up. At first, I’m dizzy. Anyone can see I’m in no shape for another mission. What I need to do is get to the pickup point Kanoa designated out beyond the oil storage tanks. I try again to log in to gen-com to let them know I’m coming, but the system won’t let me in.
Nothing to do but follow the blood road back to the canal. By the time I get there, my head is clearing. I look out past the canal, over a low-rise neighborhood of walled family compounds, and beyond them to the silhouettes of oil storage tanks rising against a starless sky. That’s where I need to go, but the blood road turns west, paralleling the canal. Somewhere out there—I can’t see exactly where—it crosses the water. I can see it again in the southwest, a fine red line projected in my overlay, leading to a low hill maybe sixty meters high. The hill is an anomaly in the flat, featureless terrain around it. My guess is it’s artificial. A mansion sits on top of it, surrounded by date palms and a fortress wall studded with landscape lights that illuminate it in the night.
I’m supposed to go there—if I accept the mission.
I don’t have to accept it. I cut the receiver out of my skullnet so the Red wouldn’t have a direct line to my emotions, so that I’d be free to make a rational choice at a time like this, and the rational choice is to get the fuck out of Basra while I’m still alive.