by Linda Nagata
He’s wearing an augmented reality visor—not a MARC, some other brand. He’s not looking at her but she can see through the screen to his spooky, pale eyes. Their focus shifts, taking in the street, and maybe the rearview mirror, or the data streamed on his display. He’s watchful, on guard. She notes the tension in the set of his mouth and wonders if he’s expecting an assault.
But is it him? It’s been so long, she’s not sure. “You got this right?” she asks him, her voice soft but urgent.
A cold smile crooks his lips. He still doesn’t look at her. “Get in, True, if you want this to happen.”
Goddamn, she thinks. It’s as if a ghost has spoken. Goosebumps rise on her arms, on her neck, at that rough, raspy voice. She remembers that voice more clearly than she remembers his face. She glances into the backseat. As best she can see, it’s empty. She opens the door and gets in, settling her daypack into her lap.
He drives. The window closes and cool air from the vents blows against her flushed cheeks. The cabin smells of sweat, dust, and a faint lingering odor of cigarette smoke. She twists around to get a better look at the backseat. No one’s there. No one’s on the road behind them. Still, she doesn’t believe he’s alone.
Motion draws her gaze to his bracelet. It’s stirring. It’s no longer a closed circle. Instead it’s crawling around his wrist like an agitated centipede. She can see mandibles. He ignores it and asks her, “You got a tracking signal?”
“Nothing running.”
“You recording?”
“No. I had a sky survey going but that’s done now.”
The centipede settles down, transforming back into a bracelet. He says, “I’d feel better if you put the visor away.”
“Not a problem.” She shoves her pack to the floor beside her feet, where there’s a rubber mat filthy with grit and pale dust. She takes off her MARC, making a show of powering it down, folding it, sliding it into her jacket pocket. “What the hell is that thing on your wrist?”
“Personal defense,” he says as he turns onto a different street. “It’s got biomarkers on you now, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Good to know.”
He drives sedately but without hesitation, familiar with where he is and where he’s going. She notes the streets and passing buildings, trying to assemble a map of their route in her mind.
“Other devices?” he asks her.
“Sure.”
“Power them down. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but you never know who’s hacked in.”
It’s a reasonable precaution. She gets out her phone and her tablet, and shuts them off. The origami army is already dormant, so she leaves those devices untouched in her pack. “You worried about being identified?” she asks.
He drawls, “No, I’ve got no reason to worry. This is my town. One of ’em. I’m just a tourist who forgot to go home. An expatriate.”
“Jon Helm is a tourist?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard he’s a notorious mercenary, head of a black-hat PMC.”
His mouth quirks. The motion highlights a scar on his lip, visible even in the low light from the dash. Miles mentioned that scar. Shaw says, “It’s a common name.”
She considers this, wondering how many versions of Jon Helm he controls. Each one no doubt supplied with a flawless history, full documentation, biometric confirmation. She wonders if someone in the American intelligence community helped him set it all up, or if he bought versions of the name on the black market.
“I thought it would take longer to find you,” she says. “Were you already here in Rabat?”
“No. I wasn’t here.”
She nods. Of course he wouldn’t keep his operation here. He’s probably based on the other side of the Atlas Mountains, in ungoverned territory. Did he come alone? Unlikely. Somewhere not far off there must be at least a few Variant Forces soldiers, assigned to guard his flanks. He implies as much when he tells her, “I’ve had assets out, looking for your crew.” There is uncertainty in his voice. Maybe she’s bait in a trap? He isn’t sure yet.
She decides to play on his doubt. “You didn’t find my people, did you?”
His right hand tightens on the wheel. “No.”
“That’s because I’m alone.”
Again that tense quirk of his lips, scar flashing white. “That’s hardcore, True.”
“Spur-of-the-moment resolve,” she admits, certain now that he has his own crew nearby, watching the approaches.
“You rogue, then?” he asks. “Not Lincoln’s girl anymore?”
“For now.”
“How does he feel about that?”
“I don’t know. I ghosted.”
A low whistle of surprise. “He won’t like that.”
She doesn’t need Shaw to tell her that. The knot in her gut is doing the job nicely, thank you. “I did what I had to do.”
“That’s what it comes down to,” he agrees. He asks, “You think it was Lincoln who commissioned that Sibolt to follow you?”
She’s suspicious but doesn’t want to admit it. “I don’t know. Maybe it was Dove. Maybe he got curious.”
“No. Dove’s been warned to be discreet.”
She touches the phone in her pocket. She assumed Dove would report her visit to Lincoln—but maybe that didn’t happen and she really is on her own, with no chance of backup at all.
You chose it, she reminds herself.
But she’s also reminded of Shaw’s associates, and it comes to her that Hussam’s little brother, Rihab, might want to know about a Requisite Operations soldier gone astray. Rihab was supposed to be the filmmaker behind Hussam’s execution videos.
Shaw senses something. A change in her breathing maybe, or the sudden fixed focus of her gaze. Or her hand on the door latch. “Something I need to know about?” he asks.
“No.” In her mind she reviews the moves she’d have to make to open the door, to roll out into the street, even as she turns her head to meet his gaze. “It’s something I need to know. Is Rihab here somewhere, with you?”
“Late to be asking that question.”
“I didn’t get to ask a lot of questions.”
“Yeah, you took a hell of a chance, that’s for sure.” He adds, “Rihab doesn’t know about you, and I sure as fuck am not going to tell him. He knows better than to show up here.”
“He’s not your client?”
“No. He’d rather kill me than pay me money. Revenge for his beloved brother, even though the prick hates Hussam almost as much as I do.”
“Hussam said you worked for him.”
“I took his money. I take anyone’s money.” His voice grows harsh. “I help them make money. Because what fascinates me, True, are the levels of depravity people are willing to engage in to earn a few dollars. No sense of perspective. Full throttle, over the cliff.”
Her cheeks heat up in the wake of this outburst. Her mouth is dry with tension.
He adds, “I saw your crew got busted in the PI.”
She breathes deeply, striving for calm. He must have seen a news report. He must have a digital assistant searching for mentions of ReqOps, of Lincoln… and of her? “A misunderstanding,” she tells him softly.
“You found an ex-priest tortured by Saomong.”
“Yes.” Her heart races. She fears for Daniel. “He’s no harm to you.”
“He told you what happened?”
“Some of it.”
“Tough bastard,” Shaw says with grudging admiration. “Thought sure he wouldn’t live out that day.”
Her voice is soft, soothing, almost submissive when she says, “You weren’t all that surprised to get my message.”
“No, I was. Not what I was expecting. But I’m not surprised someone’s following you. You got any other guesses about the Sibolts?”
She considers mentioning the biomimetic hawk in the Philippines but rejects the idea, not wanting to feed his suspicions. “No. No other guesses.”
A pause.
She turns in her seat, looking back, but the street behind is dark.
“You expecting someone, True?”
She settles back in her seat. “I think we’re both trying to understand the terrain, the potential threats.”
“Yeah, that’s always the trick.”
“You’re part of the terrain.” Her voice is cautious, feeling her way. “You’ve got people out there covering you, guarding your flanks. Don’t you? Variant Forces soldiers.”
A grunt of amusement or annoyance. She can’t tell. He hesitates as if weighing his words. Then tells her, “It’s a modern company. Relies heavily on automation.”
So maybe they are alone?
“The State Department described Variant Forces as a syndicate of independent operators.” She looks at him sideways. “Financed and organized by you?”
“You want to know how to set up a pirate PMC, True? I’ll tell you the secret. Don’t trust anyone. And make sure you hold all the keys.”
She thinks about this. Considers the little she knows of his operation. Then speculates: “The first key, that’s cash. You control it and distribute it generously. That lets you sit at the center of an intelligence network, fed by contractors. That’s how we do it, anyway. Human intelligence. Machine surveillance. Here, in your theater of operations, you know everybody who’s in the business, either directly or through intermediaries. They know you. Or they know your reputation. You’re reliable. Again, that’s how we do it. But our IT is in-house. I’m going to guess yours is freelance. Your programmers are probably from all over the world. No personal interest, paid well. Even so, you run an AI to check their code, confirm its security. Ensure you’ve got password overrides or backdoors on all the software. That how it works?”
The knuckles on his right hand whiten as he holds the wheel. “You left out one thing.”
“No qualms,” she says quietly. “But you already told me that.”
They enter a warehouse district. Lights are on in a few buildings, but most are dark. Shaw weaves through the streets. Ahead of them, a panel door at the front of a tall warehouse begins to open. Lights come on inside, spilling out to paint the street. Shaw drives in, parking on a concrete pad just large enough for two vans. It’s a loading space, surrounded by modular walls that hide the bulk of the warehouse’s interior. Only a small glass-walled office is visible.
“Anyone here?” True asks.
“Still scoping the terrain?”
“Yes.”
“No one’s here. The way I see it, this is between you and me. No one else. Right?”
“Yes.”
The panel door rattles shut behind them. He opens his door, admitting a familiar noise: the soft, rhythmic, integrated hum of precision machinery driven by quiet electric motors. She opens her own door, sniffs at air that is cool and a little dusty. Not air conditioned and even so, there’s no scent of industrial chemicals or exhaust. “Printer factory?” she asks.
“That’s what most of these warehouses are.”
She studies him across the hood of the SUV, under the daylight glow of ceiling lights. He’s six-two, maybe six-three. Lean to the point of being underweight. His cheeks are gaunt, his dark blond hair shot through with gray and starting to thin. If he’s carrying a weapon, she can’t see it… except of course the centipede bracelet, its mandible presently hidden. “Is this place secure?” she asks him.
“Good enough.”
“You aren’t worried we’ll be followed here?”
He studies her in turn through the gleaming transparent screen of his AR visor. A wary gaze, but coolly rational. “I’m expecting it. I like to know who my enemies are.”
“Then you do have someone watching over us?”
“Not someone.”
She recalls his description of Variant Forces as a modern company relying on automation. “Autonomous surveillance, sure. But you’ve got someone in the control room?”
“Autonomous response, too. You sound worried, True.”
Of course she’s worried. She’s remembering the Sibolt, and she thinks of Renata, too. “You’re saying you trust your mechs with a lethal response?”
“No qualms,” he reminds her.
Lincoln believes Shaw to be behind the car bomb at ReqOps headquarters. True would like to hear Shaw deny it—but does it matter?
Not tonight, she decides. She is the first to look away, reminding herself she’s not here to judge his guilt or innocence. But he’s good at reading people. She knows that when he asks, “Are you my enemy, True?”
She answers honestly, “Maybe later. Not tonight.”
“Good. I need a drink. Come on.”
A door opens as if in response to his gaze. The whispering of electronic machinery jumps in volume.
She follows him onto a factory floor that is only a little larger than a backyard swimming pool. Four midsize factory printers hum pleasantly, but she can’t see what they’re producing because their work stages are shielded—which means it’s hot work, involving lasers. At the back of the factory floor, a stairway takes them to a loft that must have been intended as an office, but it’s set up as a Spartan apartment with a cot, a couple of folding chairs, a small refrigerator, a few glasses, and a bottle of vodka, barely touched. “You’re not here much,” she says.
“No.” He pours a shot. Gives her an inquiring look. “One for you?”
She shakes her head. Moves to the window to look out over the factory floor. A trolley is in the aisle. With precise movements of its robotic arms, it extracts a product from one of the printers: the narrow, matte-gray barrel of a rifle.
Where to start? Maybe he’s wondering the same thing. He moves up beside her, making no noise so that she startles at his unexpected proximity. She smells the vodka, feels the heat of his skin, senses his gravity. Instinct warns her to retreat. But she ignores instinct’s good advice.
Moving slowly, deliberately, hoping not to startle either him or the centipede bracelet into a defensive reaction, she turns and touches the back of his left hand, his scarred hand—not the hand with the centipede.
He doesn’t like it. He pulls away but she grasps his wrist—her grip firm, insistent—while she watches his face, watches the corded muscles of his neck, ready to dodge a blow if it comes to that, although she’s not sure she could move fast enough. His skin is warm, slightly damp beneath coarse hair.
She feels him give in, the tension in his arm easing just a little. She releases a breath she wasn’t aware of holding and turns his arm over, pushes his sleeve up. He growls, “Who the fuck told you?”
There on his forearm is the tattoo exactly as Miles described it: the cross, the flames, the banner inscribed with her son’s name and the epithet The Last Good Man. In a husky voice she says, “Tell me a story, Shaw Walker. The story of what really happened in that Burmese forest. All these years, I thought it was just a mission gone bad. But it was worse than that.” She looks up again, her gaze meeting his through the screen of his AR visor. “Wasn’t it?”
“Shit,” he whispers. Gently, he reclaims his arm, moves away. She steps back too, leans against the glass, crosses her arms. Waiting.
He retreats into a corner at the opposite end of the window. “Short version,” he says, pulling his sleeve back down. “We were caught by surprise and we got hammered. When we tried to retreat, we were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and they killed us.”
A perfect summary of what True has been told but she knows there’s more. “The plot is in the details.”
He looks out across the factory floor. “You ever go there?” he asks. “After?”
“No.”
His chest rises and falls in a long sigh. “We were left there to die. That’s the first truth you need to know.”
“I’ve learned that much already.”
He looks surprised at these words, almost grateful… as if he had not expected her to believe it.
“Tell me the rest,” she urges. “Tell me what really happened. Tell me why Di
ego had to die.”
In The Forest
We were on a punitive mission.
The Saomong Cooperative Cybernetic Army had claimed responsibility for the shoot-down of Flight 137, and the president decided to believe them. No one wanted a trial. So Rogue Lightning was tasked with rendering justice. No prisoners. Just take out Saomong CCA’s leadership quickly, quietly, with minimal collateral damage.
We went in on a dark night under heavy clouds. Lightning on the horizon and no lights at all visible on the ground. We came in low, across contested territory, on a stealthed bird—crewed in those days, not autonomous. I was sitting in the open door, ready to drop when we reached our insertion point, with my team set to follow. There were six of us. Diego was behind me, his hand a solid weight on my shoulder. After him were Francis Hue, Jesse Powers, Hector Chapin, and Mason Abanov.
We slowed, drifted, went into a hover. The crew chief trying to sell me on the idea that we’d reached the drop point. I couldn’t see a damn thing. Not until I pulled down my night vision lenses, and that was worse.
We were twenty meters above a tangled regrowth forest—all bamboo and spindly trees—weedy shit that had popped up after the old forest was logged out. Under the rotor wash it looked like a seething, rain-blurred, bottomless chaos. The rain was coming down like nails. A gust hit us and rocked the ship. Diego’s hand tightened on my shoulder. He wanted to make sure I didn’t go over the edge before we had a rope.
The crew chief pitched the rope out and signaled me. Time to bail.
I must have weighed close to three hundred pounds with my armor, my pack, my weapon, but I was riding the adrenaline of the mission and I felt good. I grabbed onto the rope, hands and feet, and dropped into the night. Hard rain. Like static against my helmet. I was soaked before I was halfway to the ground but it didn’t matter.
I wanted that mission. I’d told myself it was going to be like reliving history. We’d be on our own, going in under radio silence because we knew if we made noise, Saomong would detect it and come looking. We carried the comm equipment anyway, of course—even if we weren’t talking, we were going to try to listen for updates from Command—but no calls home until we were done.