by Linda Nagata
Khalid had assumed Jon Helm was a story, the kind used to scare your rivals. Only when he heard Hussam El-Hashem’s description of Jon Helm did he begin to think the man might be real. So he listened attentively when True explained what was known of Jon Helm, and he chided himself for not following up on the rumors he’d heard.
It doesn’t have to be too late.
He takes a few minutes to consider and compose a plan. Then he goes to see True in her office—but Jameson is there ahead of him. When the door closes, he moves on to knock on Lincoln’s door.
He half-expects to be ignored. After all, he’s the new guy, bottom of the hierarchy, and Lincoln is busy. But the door unlocks.
Lincoln is seated behind his desk, a laptop open in front of him. “What’s up?” he asks gruffly. “Did Chris give you all the employment forms?”
“Yes, sir.”
He met Lincoln last night at the reception. When Chris introduced him, he stood there like an idiot, frozen in surprise, taking in the fire-scarred face with its artificial eye, the weird, semitranslucent prosthetic hand with its fingers rippling in nervous motion, and the violent colors of the tattoos on his arms, so unnatural they suggested his arms might be artificial too.
Khalid was used to seeing scarred and disfigured men in the TEZ, but there, war was a way of life. He hadn’t expected the scars to be so visible at home where war was distant—although here, too, it’s a way of life for some.
The scars no longer command Khalid’s attention, but he still hesitates before he speaks—a few seconds spent trying to read the mood behind that ravaged face. It’s not easy. He’s got a feeling Lincoln was hard to read even before his injuries.
Finally, Khalid says, “I wanted to talk to you about Jon Helm, sir. Or Shaw Walker, if that’s what it is.”
“Go ahead. You know anything about him?”
“Nothing solid. I heard rumors in the TEZ, though. I could make inquiries.”
Lincoln nods thoughtfully. “You don’t need to do this face to face?”
“No, sir. I know a couple of guys I trust pretty far. They trust me. I won’t need to tell them why I’m looking or mention ReqOps at all.”
“You’ll need a budget,” Lincoln says.
Khalid nods. “A couple grand?” he suggests. “It could be dangerous work for them.”
“Set it up. I’ll arrange for the money.”
No Moral Argument
Miles sits at a desk in the guest room of his parents’ house in Seattle, an old keyboard and tablet in front of him. He is typing swiftly, steadily. He’s been typing for most of the twenty hours since he’s been back, pouring out every memory of the past two months, first in broad strokes but then revisiting his narrative, over and over, filling in the finer details of his experiences: textures, scents, sounds; the words that were spoken—brutal, commanding, mocking, misleading—rendered as exactly as he can remember them; harsh gallows humor among the prisoners and desperate promises; the absurdities he witnessed, and the agonies; the lofty philosophies spawned out of hopelessness and terror.
Alongside the keyboard is a phone. It’s been activated with the number he’s used since he was a kid. When he turned the phone on, a call rang through. A harbinger of the myriad to come. So he turned the phone off again, letting his parents field the calls—calls from mediots, from news agencies, from publishers who never before showed an interest in his work. Calls from friends.
He answered none. He wasn’t ready to talk. Not even to the State Department officials who visited the house.
“Tell them I’m asleep.”
It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie either. He was hardly conscious of himself, of the room, the house, his worried parents. Instead, for most of that time, he existed within his memories—not as himself, but as a disembodied observer wandering through the hours of his captivity, reviewing it all with what felt like perfect recall.
But at last his mind is winding down, his fingers slowing, new words no longer appearing on the screen.
He is nodding in exhaustion, hardly able to hold himself up when a man’s voice speaks from out of nowhere, low, rough, regretful. “You shouldn’t have come here, Dushane.”
The voice doesn’t frighten him because he knows it’s a dream. And because it is a dream, his dream, he gets to ask a question that he didn’t know to ask when he first heard those words. “Why are you here?”
The mercenary—Jon Helm, Shaw Walker, whatever the fuck his name is—ignores the question, if he hears it at all. He moves off to supervise the execution of the Iraqi laborers who’d been heading home from the western desert and who’d given Miles a ride.
Worst mistake of their lives.
Last mistake.
No point in holding on to them. None will fetch a worthwhile ransom. No point even trying to collect. “Why the fuck don’t you just let them go?” Miles screams, but this too is a revisionary memory. He only wishes he’d said that.
The reality of that day is that Miles said nothing.
Slide it back. Play it through again, more detail.
He is on his knees. The thick fabric of his trousers fails to stop the bite of small stones against his flesh. His feet are numb, his back aches, his eyes burn with dust and the glare of the sun against the gray desert grit. His mouth is dry, throat swollen, and not just from the fear that his blood and brains are about to be redistributed in a spray pattern, a transient marker of his presence written on sand, but also because the afternoon temperature has climbed to one hundred eighteen degrees Fahrenheit and he’s been kneeling for some immeasurable period, and if it gets any hotter he fully expects the air to ignite and maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe this fucking world deserves it.
By the time the mercenary stops to look at him, Miles has given up on moral argument. He recognizes that there is no moral argument that can save him when the men who were kneeling on either side of him are already dead. The best he can do is look up to meet death’s gaze, a last act of defiance.
The mercenary is tall and lean. A long face, narrow nose, light-colored eyes just visible behind the tinted lenses of his sunglasses. His skin is burned dark by the sun but lightened again by dust caked in his sweat. His brown beard is frosted by dust. He wears combat fatigues, an armored vest, a helmet. The sleeves of his combat jacket are rolled up. He holds an assault rifle in his right hand. The fingers of his left hand are long and thin and contorted—half-curled—around a mass of scar tissue. There is a multicolored tattoo on his left forearm.
Miles means to look him in the eye, to look death in the eye, but the tattoo distracts him. It’s a thin black cross, wreathed in fire and wrapped in a loose, floating banner. Diego Delgado, it reads. The Last Good Man.
It’s an anomaly. So out of place it’s weirdly annoying. It distracts Miles from the imminence of his own death so that for a moment all he can think is What the fuck?
He turns to the mercenary for an explanation and Shaw Walker speaks the only words that Miles heard from him that day: “You shouldn’t have come here, Dushane.” He gestures with his crippled hand and Miles braces, expecting a bullet in his skull. A gag goes into his mouth instead. A hood goes over his head. He is barely able to breathe as rough hands shove him into an enclosed space with two other men.
A cold voice, speaking Arabic, warns that if any of them makes a sound, all will be shot.
Miles finds himself thinking, This is a fucking awful dream. He forces his eyes open. He has somehow made it from the desk into bed, though the light is still on.
With a shaking hand he turns it off, plunging the room into darkness.
Darkness is a reprieve. As long as the cell door is closed, he’s safe.
He imagines Shaw Walker, locked up at Nungsan.
What’d they do to you there? he wonders. He doesn’t know the full story but he knows how it turned out. He envisions a shock wave, generated by a soul’s cataclysmic collapse, exploding out of Nungsan in a karmic blast that is still i
gniting violent repercussions.
He hears Noël weeping, a distant, hopeless sound. Even farther off, gunshots in an unhurried rhythm, each one speaking the death of a man.
And it’s not over, Miles thinks.
But if he can, he’d like to finish it.
Transitions
True’s afternoon is consumed by reports and research and brief discussions. Lincoln calls to let her know that Fatima Atwan and Ryan Rogers are both back home in the United States.
“I talked to Rogers,” he says. “The State Department grilled him on Hussam’s operation but there wasn’t much he could tell them. Fatima probably witnessed more. I’d like to interview her, but Yusri doesn’t think she’s ready to answer questions.”
“Do you think it’s okay if I call her?” True asks. “Just to check in?”
“Do it. Keep the lines of communication open.”
Yusri answers her call. He expresses his gratitude, but he’s hesitant to let her talk to Fatima. “She is distraught,” he explains. A worried father.
“I understand, sir. I just want to let her know we’re on her side, we’re thinking of her.”
“I’ll ask her,” Yusri agrees, and soon Fatima is on the phone.
She sounds distant and tired. “I cannot sleep,” she admits. “Every time I do, I’m back there again.”
“It’ll get better,” True assures her. “Give it time.”
“My mother says the same thing. She insists I am stronger than this.”
“You are. You’re brave and brilliant, Dr. Atwan, and you have so much still to give to the world, so much life ahead of you.”
Maybe this is the wrong thing to say because Fatima responds in a despondent whisper. “It is my obligation, I know. A debt I owe to all those women who will never be free. I am the lucky one.”
Maybe there are no right words.
Fatima does not mention her pregnancy; True does not inquire, recognizing it as a private matter.
Afterward True loses herself for a time in banal tasks, so that it’s close to 1700 when she tries Miles again. This time a message says his voicemail is full.
She leans back, thinking about him, about Fatima. Thirty-six hours ago both were captive; they’d seen other captives murdered.
For Miles, the prospect of his own gruesome death was never far away.
Now he’s safe at home, but the sudden transition from captivity to conventional civilian life, with no chance to decompress, can’t be easy.
Restless, she stands up, stretching stiff joints, sore muscles—minor aftereffects of the mission and easy to dismiss. It’s the anxiety like a slow-drip amphetamine in her blood that’s got her on edge. She’s not sure Requisite Operations has the financial depth to survive the loss of the Hai-Lins. Worse, she’s no longer sure of her own loyalty.
Fuck this day anyway.
“Hello, Friday,” she says aloud. “Is Tamara still in?”
The office AI answers over her earpiece. “Yes, Tamara is in her office.”
True grabs her shoulder bag off the desk and walks out. Lincoln, Jameson, Renata—they all want to go hunting. Tamara’s was the lone voice of caution in the meeting today. Tamara is still an ally.
~~~
It’s late in the day. The air is cold, the sky cloudy. Wind rustles in the evergreens as True walks down the concrete path to the Robotics Center. She finds Tamara in her office.
“Hey,” True says, dropping into the guest chair. “Thanks for backing me up today.”
“I didn’t like the mood in that meeting,” Tamara tells her. Her brow creases with concern. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m good.”
“You don’t look good,” Tamara says. “You look exhausted.”
“Heh. Thanks.”
“Come on. We’re past the age of vanity.”
“Speak for yourself, ma’am.”
Tamara smiles. A thin cover for her disquiet. “Any more alarms go off at your house today?”
“Not so far. Maybe it was a mediot and they pulled out rather than risk their fancy tech.”
Tamara doesn’t argue but neither does she agree. “I sent video of the mech deer to some colleagues. No one recognized it, but Li Guiying said she’s worked on similar quadrupedal systems.”
“Is she still private-sector?”
“Mostly university now. Splits her time between China and France.”
True says, “I didn’t tell you my new theory about her.”
Tamara leans back, crossing her arms. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”
“I think she has an AI handling her correspondence. I got a note from her yesterday, minutes after news of the mission went public. ‘You are a hero among women.’ That sort of thing.”
Tamara’s eyes narrow. “You just told me you’re not past the age of vanity. Surely you’re not going to argue with that?”
True refuses to be drawn off point. “Who would write an email like that? She’s got to be using an AI. It probably tracks a list of correspondents, generates hundreds of congratulatory emails a day.”
Tamara rolls her eyes. “She likes you, True. I can’t imagine why, but she does. She admires you. She mentions you all the time. She thinks of you as a friend.”
True shakes her head. “Everything about her feels fake to me. Always has.”
“You’re really standoffish, you know that?”
True cocks her head in wry acknowledgement. “Safer that way.”
~~~
On the drive home, True finds herself pondering the obsolete nature of the laws of war. The QRF’s actions in the TEZ could be considered an act of war—if ReqOps was a sovereign nation. “Which we’re not,” she says aloud. Neither is Variant Forces. Both are private military companies—but does that matter?
If this conflict is allowed to escalate, each company could designate the employees of the other as enemy combatants, making them legitimate targets—for an adaptive definition of “legitimate”—even here, within the sovereign borders of the United States of America.
If someone with Shaw Walker’s experience and resources decides he is going to target and kill an individual, it will happen, and it won’t require a human hand. A sniper drone, a bomb in an autonomous car, a crab mech carrying explosives, a mayfly with a toxic payload. Lots of ways to get the job done. That’s the reality of their situation. It’s why Jameson wants a preemptive strike and why Chris wants a peace treaty.
Requisite Operations is not a sovereign nation, but it’s starting to act like one.
The Unofficial Story
Alex is already home when True arrives. The shotgun is out. “Just in case,” he says, but he doesn’t look worried. He pours her a glass of wine and they sit down to high-end Italian takeout that he picked up on the way home. For a few minutes life feels almost normal.
True is pouring more wine when the intrusion alarm goes off: a shiver-inducing bleat that emanates from Alex’s phone on the dining table and from her tablet, left on the kitchen counter.
She gets up, furious. “Get me a location on it,” she tells Alex as she scoops up the shotgun and heads for the mudroom.
“Hold on,” he says, phone in hand as he rises from his chair. “It’s not our robotic stalker. There’s a car at the gate.”
“A car?” she asks suspiciously, because no one ever stops by their house without calling first.
“Looks like Brooke Kanegawa.”
~~~
Courier mode: that’s what Brooke calls it. “When information is so sensitive it can’t be conveyed electronically for fear it will be intercepted.”
“So you came in person,” True says wonderingly. She’s also a little afraid.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Brooke says, “into the basement. Leave all your electronics here.”
Lights come on automatically when Alex opens the door. The three of them tramp down the hardwood stairs. The basement is finished but unfurnished. A few forgotten boxes are stacked
in a corner. There’s not much else.
Brooke looks around. She’s still not satisfied, so she heads for the furnace room. “In here,” she says, opening the door. The furnace is running, providing white noise, though True doesn’t think that will defeat any truly sophisticated listening device.
They squeeze in. Alex closes the door behind them.
Brooke is a couple of years older than True—a compact woman, only five-foot-two—still attractive, with a soft, round figure, frosty blond hair, and blue-gray eyes that project a no-nonsense attitude. Those eyes are bright as she looks up at True and says, “I don’t have any proof of what I’m about to tell you, but it was told to me by someone I trust, someone in a position to know. And maybe it involves Diego. That’s the reason I came.”
True nods. Brooke knew Diego as a ten-year-old, that year in DC. “We understand,” she says, grateful for Alex’s presence beside her.
Brooke leans closer, eyeing both of them. “There’s a suspicion our Chinese allies knew our men had been taken to Nungsan—but they failed to share that intelligence.”
Below the surface, True feels the stir of an old, familiar panic, a metabolic rush, the demand that she do something. Stiff knuckles resist the tight squeeze of her fist.
Brooke continues, “Diego was held overnight before he was executed. There might have been time enough to go in after him, if we knew where he was. If the Chinese had shared that knowledge with us, but they did not. Worse, they diverted our forces away from Nungsan.”
“But why?” True interrupts in a plaintive tone. “Why would they do that? The hunt for Saomong was a cooperative action. We weren’t at odds. We were sharing intelligence. Both sides wanted them taken out.”
Brooke raises her hand, requesting patience. “You know the official story. The story that was worked out afterward. Right? That no one knew an American prisoner was being held at Nungsan. So when Chinese forces received intel that a Saomong warlord on their hit list was in the village—and that the civilians had fled—they took unilateral action and eliminated Nungsan with a missile strike. In their position we might have done the same.”