by Linda Nagata
I glance at angel sight. It shows me the squad already at the lower gate. They’re not even maintaining interval, while the rumble of the Black Hawks has grown audible even past the heavy glass. What could I have done? I put myself in that alternate timeline and the answer is easy: Only what I am doing.
“I have to go in that room to find out,” I tell her. “All I know is that the Red would not have sent me here unless …”
I catch myself as I recognize the fallacy in my own thinking. “Ah, shit, Delphi—unless a means to accomplish the mission was already in place. Papa!” He’s eyeing me with a tense expression. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
“What have you found?”
“This place is booby-trapped. It has to be.”
We always assume booby traps when we find sites abandoned by the enemy, but I didn’t think about it at all this time because I knew the Red had prepared the way; it saved my life at the canal so it could lead me here; the blood road gleamed under my feet; I am a soldier of the Red and we are on the same fucking side.
But in the calculations of the Red, the success of this mission must count for more than my survival.
Never trust the Red.
“Get out,” Delphi says.
But Leonid wants to know more. “Do you see a wire?”
“No. It’ll be on the other side of that door. Or the trigger could be a motion sensor.”
“If it was a motion sensor, we would have set it off.” He walks toward the steel door.
“Goddamn it, Papa!” I can’t help myself. I back away until I’m against the window wall. I bump up against it and motion catches my eye. I glance down to see Abajian’s hellhound, trotting in past the gate. “Delphi, can that thing get in here?”
“No. It can’t pull the front door open.”
Leonid has reached the steel door. He crouches to study the latch. Then he looks over his shoulder at me. “You are right. Come. Record this. And the next time you trust the will of your god, remember this moment.”
“Don’t do it,” Delphi says. “Just get downstairs and get out.”
I want to get out. My heart is hammering. I’m breathing hard. But I tell myself, Lock it down, and I do what Leonid says. I cross the room to the steel door and record the glint of a freshly cut wire just visible twelve inches below the latch, light green in night vision. “Delphi, send that to Abajian.” His people will be here soon. They need to know the risk.
“Roger that. Now get out!”
It’s like Leonid hears her. He’s made his point. Now we move together back toward the front of the room. But while Leonid turns to head down the stairs, I detour to the window, worried about the hellhound, which Abajian’s people control.
“What are you doing, Shelley?” Delphi pleads. “Get downstairs.”
“Where’s the hellhound?”
While I wait for her to answer, I fish out the second round of pills Leonid gave me. I got a feeling, a bad feeling, so I dry-swallow them, just in case.
Delphi comes back after half a minute, sounding puzzled. “I don’t know where it is. Just go.”
Out past the open courtyard gate, I see Jaynie coming up the driveway, with Logan fifteen meters behind her. I log back into gen-com. The squad map confirms Fadul and Tran close behind.
Logan sees my icon and pulls up. “Shelley, sitrep!” he demands as Fadul, and then Tran, bunch up behind him. “Where the hell did you go?”
“Stay where you are,” I tell them in my whispery voice. “Everyone, stay put. Do not proceed.” Jaynie is well ahead of them now, but she stops just outside the gate. I say, “There’s a tripwire set to go off when the vault door is opened. Destroy Nashira, right? That was the order. I was supposed to open that door.”
“Ah, shit,” Logan says.
“Abajian can have whatever is in there,” I tell them, “because we are not suicide jihadi.”
I turn to follow Leonid down the stairs—but Fadul’s voice stops me: “Find another way to get it done, Shelley.” It’s a soft-spoken threat that makes me look outside again. She’s still holding her position behind Logan, but Jaynie has started to advance.
“Jaynie! Stay where you are. That is an order.”
Jaynie ignores me. She slips past the gate, while Fadul argues. “We have a mission, Captain.”
“The mission is bullshit.”
“That’s not your call.” She tries to step past Logan. He gets in her way.
“Stand down, Fadul,” he warns.
Fadul says, “Looks like Vasquez has her own mission.”
It does look that way. Jaynie is moving swiftly across the courtyard, passing the SUV, heading for the front door.
“Shit, get down!” Fadul shouts. Tran dives for the ground, while Fadul drops to one knee, bringing her HITR to her shoulder.
“Fadul, no!” I plead, sure that she’s targeting Jaynie. But I’m wrong.
Fadul fires her HITR simultaneously with a muzzle flash that blazes from beneath the SUV. The fucking hellhound must be under there. It has to be. Lying in wait beneath the vehicle, out of angel sight because Abajian has decided we are the enemy and he’s launched an ambush of my squad.
Jaynie breaks her silence. “Who is running that thing?” she yells over gen-com. “Shut it down! Shut it down!”
It’s Fadul who shuts it down. Abajian’s hellhound gets off only six rounds before she sends two grenades rocketing in under the SUV. The double blast bucks the vehicle and shoots a 360-degree circle of flame out from under it.
I check Jaynie’s icon. She must have found cover from the shrapnel, because she’s still green. But Logan is hit. I see him on the ground, while in my overlay, his icon goes yellow, then red. Tran scrambles to his side, his pack already halfway off so he can get to his first aid kit.
The rumble of the Black Hawks jumps to a higher decibel as someone opens the front door. At first, I think Jaynie has come inside. But then I see Leonid leaving the house. He circles wide around the burning SUV and then takes off across the courtyard in his fast, lumbering stride, heading for the gate, shouting at Tran to get the first aid kit ready.
“Kanoa!” With my ruined voice, it’s just an urgent whisper. “Who gave the order for the hellhound to shoot? Was it Abajian?”
Kanoa doesn’t answer.
Delphi says, “Abajian must have locked him out. What you need to do is get out of that house.”
“No. I need to know if Abajian is planning to gun us down when those Black Hawks get here.”
Her voice is trembling when she answers. “I’m going back inside. See what I can do.”
Our link closes.
Outside, Tran starts working on Logan, while Fadul heads alone for the courtyard.
“Fadul,” I tell her, “stay with Tran. Don’t make yourself a target by coming in here.”
“Can’t do it, Shelley.”
Leonid has made it across the courtyard. He intercepts her at the gate, grabs her arm strut, says something to her off-com. She jerks her arm away, but she half turns to watch him as he moves on to crouch beside Logan, lending what help he can while Tran tries to staunch the bleeding.
For a few seconds, I let myself hope that she’ll go back to help—but that’s not in the program. She passes the gate.
“Fadul!” Jaynie barks over gen-com. “You will stand down. Go back outside the gate and stay there.”
Fadul hesitates, taking a cautious look around the courtyard. “Abajian give you special orders, Vasquez?” she asks. “You supposed to gun me down next?”
“That wasn’t my call,” Jaynie answers. “And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you either, sister. I respect you. But you need to stay out of my way.”
I hear in these words the same hell-bound determination that was in my own voice when I asked Leonid, Who said I’m not willing? I can’t doubt it anymore. Fadul is operating and she will do what it takes to carry out the mission.
I turn and bolt for the
stairs. I’ve got no plan in mind, but the pills are kicking in and I tell myself there has to be a way to keep Fadul from killing herself or killing Jaynie—but then Fadul shouts a warning that freezes me at the top of the stairs. “Heads up, Shelley! Vasquez is coming after you.”
No real allies, I think. No fixed enemies.
The rumble of the Black Hawks is mixed with a roar of fire from the burning SUV, white noise that doesn’t quite cover the urgent footfalls of a dead sister racing up the stairs.
I bring up my Lasher, ready to defend myself as Jaynie bounds to a stop on the landing below me. The black shield of her visor looks up at me, but she keeps the muzzle of her HITR trained on the floor. She says off-com, “I don’t want to play this game, Shelley. Let’s go outside before one of us gets hurt.”
I go off-com too. “Goddamn it, Jaynie! Is Fadul right? Are you working for Abajian? Because Logan is dying out there and fucking Abajian ordered that!”
I’m talking fast, holding down the trigger on my words, determined to have it out. Last chance.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Jaynie says. “But don’t make it worse. I’ve got orders to protect the vault, and if you can’t rein in Fadul—”
“Why are you here, Jaynie? What did Abajian promise you? Did he promise you he’d get control of the Red?”
“Isn’t that what the L-AIs are for? But it wasn’t Abajian. This is Monteiro’s operation. She wanted you on this mission because she wanted you to bring the Red. Let it find Nashira for us. You did that. Now you need to step aside.”
Yeah, I thought it might be that way. And Monteiro got all the data from the lab too. I have to admit, it was a master play. “What did you get out of the deal?” I ask again.
“She said if I recruit you for this mission, she lifts the restrictions on the Mars project.”
Mars again?
“Fuck Mars! Why are you so goddamned eager to leave us, anyway?”
“You got no right to ask me that.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I just want it. I want to be the first. Come from nowhere. Claim a new world. That so hard to understand?”
“There’s no coming back from it, Jaynie. Never.”
“There’s no coming back from anything, Shelley. That’s how life is. We got only one way to go.”
That’s not an answer—at least, it’s not the one I want to hear. But it’s all I’m going to get in these seconds given to us, borrowed time.
I lower the muzzle of my weapon and trot down the stairs. “All right. Let’s go. But you need to help me with Fadul. I don’t want her hurt, but she’s operating.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s been given the mission that was meant for me—and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get it done.”
“You mean the Red is running her like a puppet.”
“Yes.”
I reach the landing just in time for a flash-bang to go off at my feet.
• • • •
I’m down on my back, looking up the stairs to the third floor. Not sure I ever want to get up again. My ears are ringing, my chest aching—hell, everything hurts all over again—my eyes are dazzled, my D-NVGs are askew on my face, and those pills have got my heart racing so fast I think I’m going to have a heart attack.
“You’re supposed to wear your helmet,” Fadul says as she bounds up from the first floor. She’s speaking on gen-com, so her voice reaches me through my earbuds. I couldn’t hear her otherwise, not with the roar of the Black Hawks. Even so, her voice is muffled and reverberant. I wonder if my ears are bleeding.
I turn my head. Jaynie’s nowhere in sight. I reach for my Lasher. Fadul kicks it away. “You talked yourself out of the mission, Shelley. I’m not sure whose side you’re on.”
She pauses just long enough to reach into my vest pocket and retrieve the fragmentation grenade she gave me. “Just in case,” she says. As she pockets it, she fires her HITR one-handed, launching a grenade straight into the window wall. The shock wave blasts past us as glass sprays out across the courtyard.
I cringe, sure that a bigger explosion will follow. But it doesn’t.
“Vasquez,” Fadul warns over gen-com, “that’s to let you know I’m serious. I reloaded on the way in. I’ve got two more rounds. And you do not want to be up there, ground zero, when those charges go off. You got five seconds to clear out.”
“Goddamn it, Fadul,” I rasp. I grab her leg strut to help me sit up. Looking up at her from the floor, she’s fucking intimidating, rigged out when I’m not. “You don’t think this whole building is going to come down when you set those charges off?”
“Maybe,” she concedes. “But I’m not leaving this for Abajian’s crew. Our job is to make sure everyone is visible, everyone accountable. And Monteiro is not going to be visible or accountable when she sets up her own L-AIs. So get the fuck out of here, and I’ll be—”
She twists around, bringing her HITR up to shoot at something overhead. I don’t bother to look. There’s only one thing up there that could threaten the mission. The bullshit mission.
I throw all my weight against the strut I’m holding and yank Fadul’s foot out from under her. I don’t want her hurt. I don’t want Jaynie hurt either. I just want this to fucking stop.
Fadul goes down on her back as incoming rounds stitch the air. They plow into her shoulder and chew through the stairs above her head while her HITR punches a similar line of holes in the ceiling. The hammering crack of her weapon is about to split my skull open, but I move anyway. I throw myself over her, hoping Jaynie won’t shoot through me. As I do it, I grab for Fadul’s HITR—one hand on the stock, one on the burning barrel. The weapon is slick with blood.
Jaynie doesn’t shoot. She drops over the stairwell railing, bouncing hard on her shocks as she comes down with one foot on the landing, the other on the bottom step.
I try to twist the HITR out of Fadul’s grip. She’s hurting, but she holds on. Her synthetic voice speaks in my head. Don’t make me kill you. She could kill me easily if she let go of her HITR. One blow with her arm strut and she could break my skull.
Jaynie intercedes. Calm and determined, she shoves the muzzle of her own HITR past my head, jamming it into Fadul’s throat. “Drop it.”
I flinch as gunfire erupts. But Fadul’s life doesn’t blow up in my face. It’s Jaynie who’s hit. Her HITR tumbles. Her icon shifts from green to yellow. I turn my head, and in disbelief, I see her crumpled on the floor.
I wrench the HITR out of Fadul’s weakening grip and pitch it down the stairwell, almost hitting Tran, who’s charging to the rescue with his own HITR in hand.
“You shot her!” I yell at him. “Goddamn it, we promised not to shoot each other.”
“I had to do it, Shelley! Fadul needed help!”
We both turn to see Fadul with an arm hook on the railing. She heaves herself up. She’s not in good shape. Her icon is past yellow, on its way to red. Blood soaks her sleeve, drips from her fingers, bubbles pale green in night vision from her nose—but she’s operating. She is not thinking about her life bleeding away, only about the mission: destroy Nashira.
I’m thinking I don’t want her to die.
I lunge for her again, but this time I get a footplate in the chest. It’s a gentle shove that knocks the wind out of me and sends me hurtling back against Tran. I waste seconds trying to breathe, while Fadul turns to look up the stairway.
The dirty air over the city has been set aglow by a fiery light that shimmers in the facets of the shattered window wall as they tremble in a storm front of roaring engines.
I don’t want anyone else to die. But the Black Hawks are here.
Fadul, it’s too late.They’ll kill you before you reach that door.
Her synthetic voice comes back to me. Don’t need to reach it.
She’s right. She doesn’t have her HITR anymore, but she’s got my fragmentation grenade.
She starts up the stairs, slowly. I do
n’t think she could make it on her own, but she’s powered by her dead sister.
I turn to Tran. “Take care of Vasquez. Get her out of here. And don’t come back inside.”
“But Fadul needs help!”
“I’ll help Fadul. You get Vasquez out of here. And shut down your overlay. Keep the Red out of your head before you kill us all. That is an order!”
I leave Tran and sprint after Fadul, propelled by the tireless gray bones of my artificial legs.
It really is too late.
• • • •
On the third floor, chunks of glass are tumbling in a hurricane breeze as the first of the Black Hawks roars in to circle the building. All lights are off on the craft, but night vision reveals the gunner in his window, sitting behind the machine gun. His orders will be the same as Jaynie’s: protect the vault, don’t let anyone near it. Because Abajian has a duty to deliver this site intact to the intelligence team.
Fadul knows this. At the top of the stairs, she reaches for the pin on the fragmentation grenade. If she can heave the grenade across the room, get it close to the steel door, the concussion should set off the rigged explosives—and it’s my bet that will bring the whole house down, along with the circling Black Hawk.
But that’s not going to happen. The rocket-fuel stimulant Leonid gave me has got me cranked up to a giddy superhero optimism and I am determined that this bullshit mission is not going to take anyone else’s life.
I kick off the last stair, jumping to tackle Fadul, to get her down under the sweep of the machine gun. I hit her high and hard, all my weight on her shoulders. She’s not expecting it. Her weakened grip can’t hold the grenade. It’s gone from her hand, bouncing out the shattered window wall. Her knees bend under my weight. The rig enhances the motion, and we are falling to the floor.
It’s a fucking long way down.
On the way, the machine gun lights up in a storm of muzzle flash and thunder. The last remains of the glass wall transform into a fall of hard rain. And we hit.
I lose my grip on Fadul. Cubes of glass grind under my shoulder. I must have lost my D-NVGs because it’s fucking dark. I can taste blood. I can hear someone breathing in short, sharp gasps. I think it’s me.