by Linda Nagata
Fadul is close beside me. I feel her stir.
Stay down, I tell her. A Black Hawk is on the helipad. It’s over.
She gives up, goes quiet—and that’s not like her.
I scan the squad icons in my overlay. Tran is our superhero: He’s the only one still green. And he’s not operating. I know, because the map shows him safe outside with Jaynie. I have to believe he listened to me, that he shut his overlay down.
Jaynie’s icon is yellow. I tell myself she’ll be okay and maybe someday she really will get to go to Mars.
The red icons worry me. I know Papa is with Logan, getting him stabilized. But shadows are creeping across Fadul’s icon; I think she’s bleeding out. And there’s a third red icon. That one is mine.
Over gen-com I hear Tran pleading, “Kanoa! Abajian! Whoever’s monitoring this network—we need medics upstairs! Now! ”
I appreciate Tran’s concern, but he needs to understand that Abajian has a bomb to disarm.
Fadul was right, though. I talked myself out of the mission. It was a bullshit mission. But there would have been a lot less trouble all around if I had just opened that door.
Shadows move in the night, vaguely human-shaped. There’s a roar of wind or engines.
That’s all I’ve got.
INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION
EVERYONE VISIBLE, EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE.
That’s what I’m thinking as I wake up, and it’s like despair is eating me from the inside out because I know after the disaster in Basra we are farther than ever from the goal. I was assigned to destroy Nashira, but Abajian was out to capture it, and I let Abajian win. Who knows what atrocities he’ll be hiding behind the screen of a well-taught L-AI?
And then, for just a few seconds, I’m mad as hell. Why the fuck am I still alive?
How many lives do I have to burn through?
“Shelley,” Delphi says, “can you hear me?”
I blink my eyes, feeling hollowed out and dark inside. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Lock it down!
That’s what I think. It’s an instruction to my skullnet, but the calm and the control that I expect don’t come.
“Shelley,” Delphi whispers, “look at me.”
I do. I have to blink a few times to bring her eyes into focus. She’s leaning over the side of my hospital bed, a worry crease in her pretty forehead. “Welcome back,” she whispers.
My mouth is dry, but I’m close to panic, so I make myself talk. “My skullnet’s not working.”
It’s not Delphi who answers me. It’s my dad. “I had the surgeons take it out.”
I turn my head, stunned to see him standing on the other side of the bed. He looks different than I remember. Older, grayer, but more determined, if that’s possible. And then anger hits. He had no right to make that decision for me; that’s what I’m thinking. He must have used an old power of attorney to have it done. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be okay,” he assures me.
Delphi backs him up. “Vasquez learned to go without the hardware,” she says. “You can too.”
I’m in no position to fight it. Not now. And there are other things I need to know. “Is Jaynie okay?”
“Yes. She’s back in San Antonio. She’ll be fine.”
“And Fadul?” I whisper. “Escamilla? Logan? Are they alive?”
“They were medevac’d,” Delphi tells me. “That’s all I know. Abajian locked me out of the operation.”
“I need to see Kanoa!”
I try to sit up, but my dad squeezes my shoulder, just hard enough to let me know I’m not going anywhere. “It’s over, Jimmy. It’s not your battle anymore. You’re retired.”
• • • •
Time goes by and my injuries heal. I get my head straight. More or less.
I’m seeing a shrink, who prescribes measured doses of crude medications. I keep telling him that a skullnet would fix all my issues. He tells me I’m a civilian now and a skullnet would be illegal.
It’s a selective appreciation of the law. Despite everything I’ve done, the FBI leaves me alone. No one accuses me of murder or insurrection or illegal weapons possession.
It’s good to be a war hero.
Or maybe this is just Monteiro’s way of saying thank you for delivering Nashira into her hands.
It’s been four months since Basra, but I’ve never had a word or a message from Kanoa and I still don’t know if Logan and Fadul got out alive. Delphi warns me I might never know. Leonid has disappeared too. I used to call him every few days, but he never picked up, and around the end of March, I stopped trying.
I’m not alone, though—not yet.
“Hey,” Delphi says, coming into the living room of the apartment we share. It’s a beautiful afternoon in mid-May and I’m waiting for her by the window, gazing down on the street from twenty-eight stories up. She studies me for a few seconds, a little furrow of concern in her forehead. Then she remembers herself and smiles. “Vasquez is going to want to know why you didn’t come.”
She’s got a small suitcase in her hand. I take it from her, give her a kiss, and say, “You’re a beautiful liar.”
She’s flying to San Antonio. It’s a regular thing. She goes at least once a month on company business. A few weeks ago, I went with her. Jaynie had decided to marry one of her rocket scientists, so we went for the ceremony. He’s a nice enough guy, I guess.
It was the first time Jaynie and I had spoken since Basra. Neither of us wanted to talk about the past and we’ll have nothing between us in the future, so that didn’t leave us much to say. I think we were both relieved when I got back on the plane to New York.
I walk Delphi to the door. I put my arm around her shoulder while we ride down together in the elevator. I know it’s irrational, but every time she goes I worry she won’t be back. She senses my disquiet, but Delphi is a stern woman and instead of offering reassurance, she drops into handler mode. “Don’t forget, you’re having dinner with your dad tonight.”
She likes to hand me off to my dad when she goes out of town. I tell her, “My phone will remind me.”
“Assuming you remember to carry your phone.”
I frown and reach into my pocket to make sure it’s there. “I’ve got it.”
A phone is such fucking primitive technology, but that’s what I use these days. No overlay for me, no farsights. My dad wasn’t satisfied with stripping out my hardware. I was still high on pain meds when he coerced me into an idiot promise to go without augmentation for a year. I’m already counting the days until that’s over.
Just before we reach the lobby, I lean over and kiss Delphi again. “Come back,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. “You know I’m coming back.”
I kiss her again. I don’t know what she sees in me, except we’re veterans together. We understand each other. But her name is still on the Mars crew list for a scheduled launch that’s only fifteen months away.
We don’t talk much about that. She needs to make her own decision, but I’m hoping she gives up her slot. Whatever she decides, I won’t be going. I can’t, even if I wanted to, even if there was room. I took a psych test to prove it to her. My shrink can’t fix all the scars knotted in my brain. But I’m okay with it. I’ve fought too hard for this world to abandon it now.
Delphi has a car scheduled to pick her up. It arrives as we reach the sidewalk. I put her suitcase in the trunk, then open the door for her. She looks up at me, concern in those bright blue eyes. “Are you going to be okay, Shelley?”
I fake a smile. “Roger that.”
After she’s gone, I go for a walk. My celebrity is faded, my image is still scrubbed from most public databases, and I’ve gotten in the habit of wearing shoes when I go out, to camouflage who I am, so I’m rarely stopped—and walking gives me something to do. The sun is warm this afternoon, the air is cool, the trees are green, and flowers are blooming in the concrete barricades that guard the buildings. This is a resilient city, slowly r
egaining the energy it lost after Coma Day.
I walk until I wind up at my usual haunt: an open-air table in a café close to Battery Park, where I sit with a glass of fortified water and puzzle over the question of what the fuck the rest of my life is for.
It’s my habit to watch everything around me. I’ve been in too many hostile situations to ever completely relax when I’m out in the world. So I notice him as soon as he presents himself to the maître d’. Granted, Leonid Sergun is a big man and hard to miss.
He looks across the patio, right at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him wearing farsights. As soon as he spots me, he slips them off, stashing them in an inner pocket of his coat. He smiles a charming smile at the maître d’ and then weaves his way through the tables.
Leonid comes dressed like the wealthy man he is, in designer casuals topped with a charcoal-colored coat made of a burnished fabric intended to discourage passive scanning. His hair is freshly cut, his fingernails manicured.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask him as he pulls out a chair.
“Business, my friend,” he says, sitting down. “There is always business.”
“You couldn’t answer the goddamn phone?”
The café chair creaks as he leans back. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You must know Abajian has people watching you.”
I shrug. How could it be otherwise?
“The colonel wasn’t so confident he could keep eyes on me once I left his guest quarters.”
“You’re saying it took time to persuade him?”
Leonid nods. I imagine him talking his way out of a dark-site detention facility—and I can’t help but smile in admiration. “You’re a wizard of the dark arts, Papa.”
“I debated coming to see you,” he tells me. “But I was certain you would want to know.”
I look away as my heart quickens; heat flushes from my pores. I think I know what he’s going to say. “Fadul?” I ask tentatively, remembering her icon stained with black shadows.
Against all expectation, he tells me, “Fadul will be fine. You saved her life, Shelley. Her life, and Tran’s, and Captain Vasquez’s, and, I suspect, mine. No part of that house would have been left standing if the explosives had gone off.”
So there’s that. I’m stunned. Pleased. I ask him, “Is she still with ETM 7-1?”
“This is what I am told. And your friend Escamilla, as well.”
I’m relieved to know Escamilla survived, but there is one other name Leonid hasn’t mentioned. I steel myself and ask, “What about Logan?”
“I am sorry. It was a long struggle for Logan, one that he lost just a few days ago.”
Shit.
I’ve got no words.
A waitress stops by the table to deliver a tall iced coffee and a sugary pastry to Leonid.
If I had accepted the mission I was given and opened that door, Logan would still be alive.
“You cannot blame yourself,” Leonid says, reading my mind.
I shrug. “We lost the war.”
“It could have been worse,” he tells me. “At least your President Monteiro won.”
It’s true. Things could have been worse.
I don’t know how much of the credit belongs to Monteiro, but peace has been breaking out all over. The Arctic War faded before spring. Tempers cooled in the nascent conflict between India and Pakistan. The city of Basra has been quiet since the anomalous incident in January. And while the fallout from Broken Sky continues to threaten a host of LEO satellites, at least there is now a well-funded global consortium tasked with developing a means to confront the problem of orbital debris.
History suggests this is only a respite. Monteiro captured the technology behind L-AIs, but how long before she oversteps? How long before the Red sees through it and sends someone to unbalance her plans? It’s not easy to tie down a Titan. That should scare me, but it doesn’t. Like an enemy once said, we’ve always lived with the Devil. So what?
We’ll adapt.
I take a few moments to regroup, to gather my courage, and then we go on to talk of other things. Leonid tells me of his nephews and his hopes for their futures. I tell him of Delphi. I have hopes too. Maybe neither of us has the right to hope for anything, but hell, we’re only human.
So do I regret what I’ve done?
I regret the need for it. Is that enough?
I wanted to serve. I wanted to be the good guy, to do the right thing. But how do you know if the sacrifices you’re asked to make are worthwhile? If the blood on your hands means something? You don’t know. You can’t. That’s the soldier’s dilemma. What it comes down to is trust. Do you trust those who send you into battle?
In the end, Leonid lifts a fresh glass of iced coffee. “To those we have lost,” he says.
I touch my glass to his. “Never forgotten.”
He uses his phone to settle the bill, adding a generous tip, and we walk out together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go first to my agent, Howard Morhaim, for encouraging me to take the Red Trilogy to the next level, to Michael Prevett who saw the potential, and to Joe Monti at Saga Press for daring to take these books on.
I also want to acknowledge and thank those who helped specifically with Going Dark. People kind enough to answer random questions that appeared in their inboxes include Ilona Andrews, Amy Sterling Casil, Wil McCarthy, Jesse Reyna, Deborah J. Ross, and Edward A. White. Judith Tarr helped me to get an early version of this novel into shape, Edward A. White and Jeffrey A. Carver provided additional feedback as beta readers, while Joe Monti furnished essential editorial insights. And as always, I want to thank my husband, Ronald J. Nagata, Sr., for putting up with me and making my writing possible.
Last but certainly not least, I’m grateful to everyone who’s taken the time to read my books and stories. This series exists because of your support and encouragement. Thank you all for coming along for the ride!
If you enjoyed the Red Trilogy, please consider reviewing the books at a blog or an online bookseller, or mention them on your favorite social media. To be notified of my latest books and stories, please visit my website at MythicIsland.com and sign up to receive my occasional newsletter.
Linda Nagata, June 2015
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Nagata is the author of many novels and short stories, including The Bohr Maker, winner of the Locus Award for best first novel, and the novella “Goddesses,” the first online publication to receive a Nebula Award. The Red: First Light was a finalist for best novel for both the Nebula and John W. Campbell Awards. She lives with her husband in their longtime home on the island of Maui. Visit her at MythicIsland.com.
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ALSO BY LINDA NAGATA
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Linda Nagata
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Larry Rostant
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