by Linda Nagata
He says, “I remember Shaw. He was an arrogant son of a bitch who took things personally, even when it should have been just another part of the job—and he wasn’t above revenge.”
Her response is low and heated. “You think you know something about him, Alex? I didn’t think you knew Shaw all that well.”
They’ve reached their intersection. A turn lane takes them to the rural road leading to their home. A low, crowded forest looms on both sides of the road, mostly spindly maples, leaves half-gone this late in the season, with more falling, tumbling through the headlight beams.
Alex says, “Diego never talked to you about his first deployment with Rogue Lightning.”
Some words are like bullets. True’s heart lurches. She hears the low pounding of her pulse even over the road noise—and she doesn’t know why. “Rogue Lightning missions were all classified,” she says quietly, allowing no hint of distress into her voice. “He wasn’t supposed to talk about it.”
Alex pushes the accelerator, driving swiftly but carefully. They’ve lived here four years now, the longest they’ve lived anywhere in their long marriage. Time enough for him to memorize every curve, but he remains alert, eyeing each approaching car as a potential enemy. He’s seen too many accidents to take the skills of other drivers for granted.
“He wasn’t supposed to talk about it,” Alex agrees. “But after he got back, he came to me. Said he needed to talk. Made me swear never to tell you. He didn’t want you to think less of him.”
Her pulse drums harder as fear overtakes her. Fear for Diego.
“Oh God,” she whispers, staring ahead into the night. Never mind that her son is far beyond all risk and all pain.
Memories roll in, all out of place for this conversation. She was deployed for so much of his childhood. His grandmother, Alex’s mom, lived with them then, helping to raise him. A good kid. Smart and strong and generous, a team player. Endowed with joy…
But he came home from his first deployment with Rogue Lightning a different man. A more reserved man, quiet and cautious. No one returns from combat unchanged. Knowing that, she said nothing, but she wept secretly, mourning the child he’d been, even as she took pride in the man he became. And she reminded herself of one of Lincoln’s favorite adages: Someone’s got to do the dirty work. Better that a good man take on the task than a sadistic monster.
Alex senses her distress. He gives her time, driving half a mile before he speaks again. “I’ve kept that oath for eight years and I would have kept it to the grave, but I know you. You get an idea in your head that something needs to be done, and you can’t let it go.”
Maybe it’s his criticism or maybe it’s the way he has of drawing things out, but her temper triggers. “God damn it! If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
He steps hard on the brake. “Deer,” he announces. “On the right.”
She looks up to see a dim shape stepping out from the shadow of the trees. Long spindly legs with too many joints, a lithe, segmented body in a matte-brown camouflage coloration, and a telescoping neck that retracts as she watches, drawing the head, with its stereoscopic eyes, downward until it fits in a niche at the front of the chest.
Alex is right that its shape suggests a deer, but it’s much smaller, no more than two feet high. It reverses direction, stepping swiftly backward, locomotion so unnatural the hair on the back of her neck stands on end. “Stop the car,” she says as it disappears into the dense shadows between the trees.
“Not a deer,” Alex growls, steering onto the road’s unpaved shoulder. “A mech. And not one of ours.”
Fallout From The Mission
Lincoln notes when True and Alex leave the reception. He’d like to leave too, but leadership demands his presence. It’s his duty to show confidence in his people and in his company. So he circulates. He talks to Khalid. “You’re not officially employed yet. We’ve got paperwork to do. But I want you to come in tomorrow with everyone else and get your interview done.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what Chris said. I’ll be there.”
Miles is waiting to talk to him, his parents and sisters smiling behind him. “Lincoln, I’m heading out, but I want to thank you—”
Lincoln holds up his hand. “I just wish we’d come in sooner.” He leans in and adds in a hoarse undertone, “I know True asked you to sit on this…” He hesitates, considering how to phrase it. “…this Jon Helm rumor. I’m asking you to keep it quiet for a little longer. You’re going to get slammed with a thousand requests for interviews, but if you could keep this under wraps for another day, I’d appreciate it. I don’t want to hit my team with the news tonight, but I want them to hear it from me.”
Miles nods. “I can do that. Anyway, the name is going to stay ‘Jon Helm’ until I can confirm… well, the other.”
“Okay. You take care.”
As Lincoln turns away, Tamara intercepts him, reminding him about the recovered electronics. “Who’s got custody?” she asks. “We need to make sure those bags are not opened or there’s no point doing a pollen and fungus analysis.”
“I’ll talk to Chris about it,” he promises. “And I’ll take the bags into headquarters tonight. Leave them in your lab for safekeeping.”
He realizes this is a good excuse for making an early exit. With that in mind, he checks in on his two daughters—eight and ten years old—who are playing big sisters to Jameson’s three-year-old twins. “We’re going to leave soon,” he warns them.
“No,” Anna, the older, protests. “Everyone just got here.”
“We’re having fun,” Camilla chimes in.
“Five minutes,” he growls. “I don’t want any argument.”
God, he adores them. But he gets impatient anyway, too aware that they live in a different reality, blithely ignorant of the terrors of the world. That’s a good thing. That’s as it should be, but it’s hard to make the shift between their world and his.
He continues around the room, shaking hands, thanking his people and their spouses. When Chris sees him coming, he whispers something to his wife, who melts away.
Lincoln doesn’t like the idea that Chris has an agenda, not tonight. Tonight he just wants to get clear. “Let’s save the analysis for tomorrow,” he says. “I’m heading out. Hayden’s got the key card. He’s in charge of making sure everything gets cleaned up. I just need to round up the girls and get the recovered electronics from you.”
“Sure,” Chris says. “I’ve got the bags. They’re with the rest of my gear. But I need to ask you: what the hell was going on with True, right after we got in? That did not look like a friendly conversation.”
The fingers on Lincoln’s prosthetic hand tap in quick rhythm: thumb to index, middle, ring, and little finger. “Fallout from the mission,” he says gruffly, using truth as an evasion. He isn’t ready to talk about Shaw. Hell, he isn’t ready to believe it—and he’s still burned by the way True ambushed him with her allegations. She did it that way on purpose, not saying anything until just before her plane touched down, a ploy aimed at shaking him up, shaking the truth out of him—but he’s always told her the truth. And the truth is, he believed Shaw was dead.
This idea that he’s not, that Shaw is alive—there’s no joy in it. Not for him. Eight years ago, yes. Yes, he would have been happy to find Shaw, but now…
Far better that Shaw Walker died in the line of duty than that he walked out on that duty, walked out on the memory of the men of Rogue Lightning who followed him into that Burmese forest to die there—five of them, with Diego on the cross.
For all the differences Lincoln had with Shaw, and despite the falling-out after their last mission together, he meant every word of praise he spoke when he delivered the eulogy at Shaw’s funeral. Shaw was a skilled warrior, daring, decisive, a fast thinker who could recast any mission the moment circumstances changed, and he was blessed with more than the usual share of luck. He was a hard man too—and that was appropriate. No sympathy for those who talked tough bu
t couldn’t measure up. His men admired that, and they loved him. They trusted him not to waste their lives.
But like any man, he had his flaws. He could be self-righteous, humility was never a strong point, and he resented being held back or overridden by commanders who did not have his experience in the field. Sometimes he refused to be held back. But Shaw’s flaws were flaws of ego. Lincoln cannot believe he is the same man as the hostage-trading mercenary Miles described.
“Fallout from the mission?” Chris echoes. His gaze is intent, suspicious. “What fallout? If True had a problem with the mission, she should have come to me.”
“She didn’t have a problem with the mission.”
Chris needs to hear this rumor about Shaw Walker. He’s part of Rogue Lightning and so is Jameson. But they’re not the original team. Both were brought in after Nungsan, and neither knew Shaw except by reputation.
“We’ll go over everything tomorrow,” he promises. Then he collects the electronics and his protesting daughters and makes his escape.
Fairy Godmothers
True grabs a flashlight from the car’s center console and gets out, directing the bright beam into the forest.
Alex has the trunk open. “See anything?” he asks over the sound of a magazine being jammed into a pistol.
“No. But it’s out there, watching us.”
He steps up beside her, a 9 mm in hand. “Someone’s fairy godmother?”
“Maybe. Definitely a biomimetic, but I’ve never seen one like it before.”
“Didn’t notice weapons on it.”
“Nothing overt,” she agrees.
He says, “Dash cam should have an image.”
“Right. I’ll send it in. Tamara should be able to track it down, check for registrations.”
His gaze sweeps the woods. “It’s giving me the creeps standing out here. Let’s get back in the car and go.”
“Okay.”
Alex closes the trunk, but when he gets in, he still has the pistol. He passes it to her without a word, puts the car in gear, and accelerates onto the road.
“Probably just a fairy godmother,” she says.
He grunts.
“Nice design.” She’s trying to sound casual. “Maybe we should get one like it.”
“Damned sophisticated,” he allows. “Not cheap.”
“Not out of reach, either.”
Biomimetic robots—mechanical animals—were more and more common, and why not? Millions of years of trial-and-error testing lay behind their shapes and the efficient physics of their motion. The mech they saw suggested a small deer—a nice option in rural areas, one that True had not considered before. A ground-based design like that would be less vulnerable to strong winds than a flying drone, and a well-made model could be both swift and stealthy in the woods, capable of standing still within the shadows and observing for hours while consuming very little energy. Something like it would be a nice addition to ReqOps’ origami army.
Thinking out loud, she says, “It must have just been released. It shouldn’t have allowed itself to be seen from the road. That suggests it hasn’t had time to learn the terrain.”
“Or it’s lost.”
If so, it won’t last long. Personal drones aren’t supposed to wander through or fly over private property. In rural areas, those that do tend to disappear. Over the past year, True shot down three that flew too close to the house. No way to know if they belonged to hobbyists, mediots, or an enemy. Hostile intent is assumed.
She and Alex keep their own menagerie, of course. Gargoyles—low-slung like crabs, with a carapace designed to shed the force of the wind—inhabit the roof, watching over the house and the surrounding sky. They have enough locomotive ability to keep themselves above any snow accumulation and to keep intruders in sight. The rest of the five-acre parcel is patrolled by two sets of fairy godmothers. The first are squirrel mimetics that can stealth-glide or -crawl in the forest canopy, and the second are turtles—ground-based devices that move faster than their name implies. As a rule, only three devices of each type are active, while a fourth recharges at the house. All are linked to a security AI.
True designed the system, selecting high-end components. Now she feels a sting knowing that none of her devices is as sophisticated as the deer mimetic.
Alex turns the car onto the long driveway. The gate is already open for them as the house senses their proximity and prepares for their arrival. Gravel crunches under the tires. Most of their land is forested in a tangle of regrowth that’s come up in the thirty years since the area was last logged. Dark evergreens mix with alders and maples that are mostly bare this late in the year. The house is a neat two-story skirted by a wide lawn with trees beyond to screen them from their neighbors. True means to plant azaleas and rhododendrons at the forest’s edge, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Amber lights are already on in the house as they drive up. The garage door is open. Alex pulls in, parking next to True’s SUV. They bought the place when she retired from the army, and both hope they never have to move again.
True retrieves her gear while Alex unloads his pistol and returns it to the trunk. She drops her pack in the mudroom, sits down to take off her boots, and then carries her gun cases into the kitchen, leaving them on the table.
She takes a moment to listen, but the house is quiet. Too quiet. It’s like no one lives there.
“We should get a dog,” she says as Alex follows her in.
“When you’re ready to retire, we will.”
She turns, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed, eyeing him, taking in his dark eyes, his high forehead, his lean weathered features. A handsome man, still. She fell so hard that night they met. After she knew she was pregnant, she told her parents, “It was meant to be. We share the same birthday.” God, what a ridiculous tangle of passions she’d been, so defiant, so in love. She let the pregnancy happen, maybe in part to show Colt that her life was her own.
Not the smartest move she ever made, but not one she regrets.
“So tell me all of it,” she says gruffly, brought low by the heartache of fractured trust.
His gaze is stern. “You heard what Lincoln said. Shaw wasn’t the hero you imagine.”
“So what happened? What did he get Diego to do?”
“He got him to cover up a war crime.”
“Ah, fuck.” True turns away. Diego’s time in Kunar Province had cast a shadow over him, but she attributed it to combat’s horrific reality. It doesn’t take a war crime to affect a man that way.
“Wait,” she says, puzzled by a new thought. “Lincoln was there. He must have known.”
Alex meets her troubled gaze. “Yes.”
A Presentiment of Danger
Lincoln is alert, scanning both ground and sky as he crosses the dark parking lot with his daughters—but it’s Anna who spots the threat. She’s chattering with her sister, a step ahead of him, when she stops, hand up, hissing at Camilla for quiet.
Lincoln is hit with a presentiment of danger.
He’s coached his girls to be alert, encouraged them to always be aware of their surroundings. He’s trained them how to recognize potential threats and how to react. It’s a game for them. Not for him. He shifts both collection bags to his prosthetic hand. His skin prickles, puckering around his scars as he tries to figure out what’s wrong.
Anna is partly on his blindside, cast half in amber by the building lights, half in black and white. She turns to look at him. He’s confused to see her smiling—proud, excited—not scared at all. When she’s sure she has his attention, she points—using just her finger, not extending her arm, exactly the way he’s taught her. She indicates the unlighted access road that leads to the highway. Then she flattens her hand, wobbling her palm. It’s their sign for a drone.
He sees it then, painted in light from the highway. It’s gliding on meter-wide membranous wings, engines off as it drops in a long, slow arc toward the parking lot. He recognizes the model—a Coriolis P
R30. It’s not much more than a toy, incapable of carrying a payload beyond the tiny camera that comes standard, but it’s quiet and capable of stealth surveillance.
It’s probably recording the thunderous pounding of his heart.
“Mediot?” Anna whispers.
All of them jump, and Camilla screeches, as a squadron of three defensive starburst copters shoots from hutches on the roof of the single-story terminal building. It’s illegal to fly private drones this close to an airfield and the perimeter on this field is strictly enforced. It’s one reason Lincoln uses it.
“Don’t worry,” he tells Camilla. “Those are just going to chase the mediot away.”
He’s wrong. The squadron’s lead copter streaks toward the PR30. The winged drone tries to turn but it’s slow. There’s no way it can outrun the copter. There’s a pop. The PR30 drops, disappearing into an open field. The starburst copters circle the site, moving with manic speed, then shoot back to the terminal building.
“Holy hemlock!” Anna exclaims, and Camilla immediately echoes her.
Holy hemlock? Lincoln wonders, but he knows better than to ask.
He scans the parking lot, the nearby fields. He’s on edge, wondering what else might be out there. The airfield’s defensive copters offer protection from aerial intruders, but would they detect a ground-crawling mech? An ambitious mediot might try both approaches in an effort to get first pictures of the team. An Al-Furat hired gun might choose a ground crawler too.
Anna fails to hold her position. Without waiting for permission, she starts for the truck, waving her hands to make sure the sensor sees her. Lincoln almost panics. He jumps after her, grabs her shoulder with his free hand.
“Stay put,” he warns.
His grip is too tight. It makes her squirm. “Dad!”
He ignores her, heart racing as he eyes the truck suspiciously. He’s picturing the kamikaze crabs True used in Tadmur. It’s easy for a crawler to carry a payload, to get up into an undercarriage, and from there into the engine block… or the gas tank.