by Jamie Sawyer
Harris sighed. “All right. Your call.”
He tapped some commands into the holo-table, and the display shifted. I did my best to hold back the surge of rage that I felt inside me as Riggs’ image appeared there. My fingernails bit into the palms of my hands as they formed into fists. Had I ever hated someone as much as Riggs? Hard to say. I’d once found that face handsome. The small, almost coy, smile. The way the edges of his eyes crinkled when he laughed. Had any of what we had shared together actually been real? Again, hard to say.
“As you know, this is Corporal Daneb Riggs,” Harris declared, “former Off-World Marine aviator. Latterly enrolled with the Alliance Army. Elected service with the Simulant Operations Programme.”
It’d been his choice, I mulled. When had the Black Spiral turned him?
Harris answered my unvoiced question. “We believe that he was recruited by the Black Spiral as a result of his faith. He was a third-generation Gaia Cultist, and some of his more distant relatives are known to have hard-line beliefs. They were responsible for some minor insurgent activity on Tau Ceti. Most of those records have since been expunged—it’s unclear by whom—but you can probably draw your own conclusions.”
Novak grunted and stood a fraction closer to me. “I never liked him. Too cocky. Is asshole.”
Lopez raised her eyebrows. “He’s an asshole and a cock?”
“Yes,” Novak said. “Is asshole and cock.”
The Jackals’ brevity did nothing to lighten my mood. I couldn’t take my eyes from the holographic of Riggs. The image had been taken from his service record, and Riggs looked the perfect soldier, standing to attention, Army uniform resplendent. Eyes sparkling with promise.
Harris continued, “He did Boot Camp on Tau Ceti V, same world he was born on. Started attending off-base religious ceremonies during Basic training.” Harris shrugged. “He had full American citizenship. No one asked questions. Turned out those ceremonies weren’t Gaia Cult meetings after all. Probably Black Spiral. Military Intelligence discovered the cell last year, not long after you went into the Maelstrom.”
I swallowed back my anger. “I want to know what made him turn.”
What made him do this to me, I almost added. But I didn’t go that far, because the Jackals were here. My relationship with Riggs had been secret, and I was only going to reveal it to them if absolutely necessary.
Harris called up another file. Another familiar face appeared there.
“You are aware of the operative known as Warlord,” he said matter-of-factly. “Also known as Clade Cooper. Former Alliance Army Ranger.”
Clade Cooper’s service file scrolled across the display now. An image of Warlord as he had once been: older, but otherwise much like Riggs. Also dressed in his full service uniform, on a broad chest proudly wearing every medal he’d earned during the years of his service. He too looked handsome in a rugged sort of way, a reflection of Harris, although his was a face without the worry lines and the influence of a lifetime drink problem.
“This was Cooper prior to his last deployment,” Harris said. “Military Intelligence sent him to Barain-V. As you may know, that didn’t work out so well.”
“He was captured by the Krell,” Elena filled in. “Spent two years in captivity.”
“During which time his family were killed,” Harris said. “It was the Red Fin Collective. Shortly thereafter, Cooper was rescued from Barain. He’s the only trooper known to have survived full immersion in the Deep.”
The Jackals listened on. They had heard some of this from me, after the briefing from our former commanding officer, Major Sergkov. Hearing it again, though, was no less disturbing.
“On his return to Alliance space,” Harris explained, “Cooper was destroyed—both mentally, and physically. The prospects of his recertification for service in the Alliance armed forces, certainly as an Army Ranger, were remote.”
The holo cycled through a collection of surveillance feeds, showing Cooper’s debilitated state. Lopez gasped, put a hand to her mouth, as the last picture sprang to life. Head and upper body, naked, lying on what might as well have been a mortuary slab.
“That should come with a safety warning,” Feng said. He plainly wasn’t joking.
The man in the image looked nothing like Clade Cooper. I doubted I would have recognised him. Now, his skin was scarred all over, torso a mass of keloid tissue. Limbs and muscles wasted, atrophied. His upper body was pocked by dozens of medical ports, into which tubes ran, shunting compounds to and from his dying body. His head was shaven tight.
Only his eyes showed any real life. In those, I could see hate. Could see horror. Through some twist of fate, his upper face looked largely injured. I had seen that face for myself, seen Cooper wearing a respirator that had concealed the worst of the scarring.
“This was taken during Cooper’s medical treatment on Fortuna,” Harris said.
Fortuna was the location of preference for veterans about to be drummed out of active service, a paradise-world where troopers were often sent for R&R before they received discharge papers. It had the best tech that an injured serviceman could ask for, but in the face of injuries such as Clade’s? It felt like even Fortuna wouldn’t be enough to help him.
“This is Cooper six months later,” Harris said, switching the feed again.
Lopez braced for more horror, but there was none. The image instead showed something all-too-familiar: a grainy surveillance feed, likely taken during a military operation. Cooper was now dressed in his trademark exo-suit, no helmet, face concealed behind a respirator. His gear was emblazoned with the ubiquitous Black Spiral badge, and he was running and firing towards the location of the camera. The image abruptly terminated in static.
“He made a damned good recovery,” Zero said. “Too good, in fact.”
“They said that he would never walk again,” Elena echoed. “Which is surprising. It was only months after his discharge that he came to the notice of Military Intelligence as a significant figure in the Black Spiral movement.”
“How did they fix him?” Lopez asked.
“Unknown,” said Harris. “But whatever it was, it gave him the means to execute a very significant grudge that he has against the Alliance.”
“That’s great,” I said, “but where does Riggs fit into this? Why is Riggs working with Cooper?”
“I’m getting to that,” Harris said. “One last image.”
The display shifted to show the disposition of Army Ranger forces, and then focused specifically on a unit called the “Iron Knights.” Squad leader: Sergeant Clade Cooper. I remembered the designation; Major Sergkov had told me that the Iron Knights were Cooper’s team. Other names scrolled down the display …
“Corporal Marbec Riggs,” I whispered. More information spilled from my mouth, for some reason better spoken aloud than read to myself. “KIA on Barain-V.”
“Riggs’ father,” Zero said, looking from me to Harris, then back again. “Marbec Riggs was Daneb’s father, wasn’t he?”
Harris nodded solemnly. “That’s right. He died fighting the Krell, under Clade Cooper’s command.”
And suddenly everything snapped into place. It all made horrifying, precise sense.
“Riggs always did hate the fishes,” Lopez said. She shook her head, as though trying to dispel the idea but finding that she couldn’t. “He hated them because of what had happened to his father.”
“Fucking traitor,” Novak said. “Is no excuse.”
“The Black Spiral was the perfect outlet for Riggs to vent his anger,” Harris concluded.
“Why didn’t anyone make the connection?” I asked. I was almost yelling now, but I didn’t care. “Why didn’t Military Intelligence realise that there was a damned mole in Sim Ops!”
“Why would they?” Harris said. “Riggs was a promising Sim Ops recruit. Good military family.” He nodded at the image of Riggs again. “Nice hair. Good kid.”
If you couldn’t see who he really was, then how coul
d they? my inner voice critiqued. I put a hand to my face. Pinched the bridge of my nose and stood there for a long time.
“Are you all right?” Zero asked.
I hardly noticed when she put her hand around my shoulder, a gesture that was wasted, but appreciated. There wasn’t much that was going to make me feel better about this.
Nothing but killing Riggs.
“It’s just a lot to take in, is all,” I said. The words sounded distant and wrong, someone else’s excuse.
“This is what we’re up against,” Elena said. “This is the new war, Jenkins. Now, are you going to help us fight it?”
In the corner of the room, beyond Elena’s shoulder, I saw a flicker of movement in the shadow. The not-Riggs that had been taunting me in the Directorate prison. He was smiling—the same smile as on his service record—but the expression had somehow turned malicious, somehow turned dark.
“You’re going to have to catch me first, Jenk.”
“With pleasure,” I said.
The ship’s medic, Maberry, was waiting for me in the corridor outside the war room.
“Do you have a moment?” she asked. “Preferably alone. There’s something that I need to talk to you about.”
What Harris had just told me was still ringing in my ears, and I needed time to think about what Riggs had done—why Riggs had done it—but Maberry’s demeanour made it clear that she really needed to talk to me. She peered into Harris’ war room, in a way that suggested she wanted this to remain between us.
“Sure,” I said. “Fine. I’ll come now.”
“That’s probably best.”
“Is it about Zero?”
Maberry chewed her lip. “Who?”
“My sergeant,” I said. “Zoe Campbell. She was almost redacted by the Directorate.”
Maberry shook her head. “Sorry, I’m struggling with the names of the new arrivals. The sergeant was lucky. Miraculously so. Had the redaction process been allowed to run for a few minutes longer …” She let that hang, allowing me to draw my own conclusions. “But she’ll be okay. Physically, she’s tired, but that’s not news. The burns to her scalp will heal.”
“Then what’s this all about?”
“I’ll show you.”
She led me into the sick bay and closed the hatch behind us before hurriedly calling up some files on the tri-D display. They looked like medical scans, low-resolution images produced from the shipboard auto-doc. Internal body maps, that sort of thing. They only caught my interest when I saw who the images were of.
PATIENT: FENG, CHU.
“This is your man Feng,” Maberry said, pointing out the glowing scan data. “He’s a Directorate clone trooper.”
“I know that. He has the serial codes to prove it.”
“I’ve seen them. He was liberated from a birthing crèche on Delta Crema station. It’s tattooed on his ass, in case you wanted to know.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t say I’ve seen that, but I was aware of the fact. He’s a damned good soldier. He’s proved his worth ten times over.”
Maberry nodded professionally. “I’m sure that he has,” she went on, “but you should know about his background.”
“He’s been fully de-doctrinated,” I explained. “I’ve seen the documentation. His conditioning was broken.”
As Kwan had stated, all Directorate clone troops were born indoctrinated. Pre-programmed to the great cause, ready to take to the field with the minimum of training, brought up in military crèches. When the Asiatic Directorate had officially collapsed, many R&D facilities were seized by the Alliance. Some had yielded useful candidates for the Sim Ops Programme. The improved clone physiology was a stable platform for the operation of a simulant. Of course, liberated clones were subject to extensive psychological testing, their Directorate loyalty protocols broken, before they could be declared safe for deployment as Alliance troops.
“I don’t doubt that’s what you were told.”
I didn’t like Maberry’s tone. “We don’t know each other very well, Maberry, for you to be casting aspersions on my squad.”
Maberry didn’t answer me directly, but instead said, “This scan is from the auto-doc, taken when you first came aboard the Paladin.”
The image was of the inside of Feng’s skull. It looked unexceptional. He had all the usual stuff: a brain, some skull, maybe a little too much space in there, but nothing particularly unusual. But as Maberry manipulated the image, I saw that wasn’t quite true. There was a sliver of metal deep in Feng’s head. It was printed with a serial code and Chino characters, visible only under extreme magnification.
Maberry crossed her arms over her chest. “As his commanding officer, you should be aware that Private Feng still has something in his head.”
“How the hell did that get there?”
“It’s been there since his inception, I’d wager.”
“What is it?”
“A neural-implant.”
“What does it do?”
“Impossible to say without thorough analysis,” Maberry answered, unwilling to commit herself. “But if I had to guess, I’d say that it’s some sort of bio-module. A neurotransmitter or receiver, maybe? That’d make sense.”
“It needs to come out,” I decided. “Feng can’t walk around on an Alliance starship carrying Directorate technology.”
“The boy is Directorate technology,” Maberry said. “They made him, and whatever we do to him, he’ll always be their product. Can you see how the neural-plant is anchored to the cerebellum by these strands?” I nodded, although I couldn’t really see that level of detail from the scan. “It’s wired to his brain so deep that it’d be impossible to remove without killing him. At least, with the tech we have on this ship. Maybe a hospital ship, or a Sci-Div facility could help, but …”
“What about smart-drugs? Try a course of medication, flush it out.”
Maberry shook her head. “Nothing I’m familiar with would be capable of that sort of precision, I’m afraid.”
“Then ask Nadi to help. Perhaps she could hack the module, run a bypass.”
“This is beyond her,” Maberry said. “And I thought it best to speak with you first, before I discussed it with Nadi. She’s young; she talks a lot. Once she knows, the rest of the ship will follow shortly after.”
“Shit.”
“It might be benign.”
I gave Maberry an unconvinced look. “Really? The Directorate put something in a clone trooper’s head, and it might be benign?”
“Well, whatever it is, Commander Kwan didn’t activate it when he had Private Feng in his custody on Jiog.”
Surgeon-Major Tang had made Feng. She had been project director, had been responsible for his creation. The Mother of Clones, Kwan had called her. It was beyond question that Kwan and Tang had known about the neural-plant. So why hadn’t they played that card, when we had been on Jiog? Although I desperately wanted to believe that the neural-plant was benign, I just couldn’t accept it. I knew the Directorate too well for that.
“Does Feng know that it’s in there?”
“I don’t think so. He was quite proud to tell me that he had been retrained, that his conditioning had been broken.”
Feng wasn’t a machine, although the way we were talking about him made him sound an awful lot like one. The idea of concealing this information from Feng made me feel instantly guilty. He deserved to know what was going on in his own head, even if he couldn’t change it. I would certainly want to know. But what was the alternative? Feng had struggled with enough self-doubt to last a lifetime. He was one of my Jackals, and if he was a problem, I was going to have to deal with him myself.
“Feng’s a good kid,” I said. “Thanks for the intel, but keep this to yourself, please.”
“Of course,” Maberry said. “If there was any immediate danger, I think we would already know about it.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said, although I didn’t feel that way at all.
; “You might be on your own out there, soon. I just thought that I should let you know.”
We took the Shard Gate in the Canopus system.
It was defended by a heavily armed contingent of Alliance Navy, but Nadi did her thing, fooling Space Control into believing that we had the relevant authorisation codes. We slipped through the military cordon easily enough. They were on patrol for infected Krell forces, and obvious Black Spiral sympathisers: a single French-registered freighter, claiming to be transporting relief supplies to the Outer Colonies, was easily dismissed. Nadi did a good job faking our credentials—she was a real asset to a covert operation, and to the Watch.
After that, we Q-jumped to Polaris. Another Shard Gate waited there, and we went through the same procedure. No hassle, no problem. It was almost too easy.
I sat up in the rec room, waiting, drinking coffee. Watching the ever-more-depressing newscasts as we sailed on through the void. Famine on Epsilon Eridani. Jakarta Prime calling for independence. Senator Lopez petitioning the Alliance Assembly for withdrawal of military support for the Outer Colonies …
“What’s the Senator’s problem?”
I jumped awake. Body rigid, I went into battle-mode immediately.
“Sorry, Jenk,” said Zero. “Didn’t mean to startle you there.”
Zero, looking about as tired as I felt, drifted into the rec room.
“I’m not startled,” I said.
She pulled a tight smile, fixed herself a coffee. “Tell that to your face.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Zero.”
She sat beside me at the table, repressed a quick shiver as she looked up at the news segment on the viewer—Krell fleet arrives at Joseon-696: Directorate forces claim decisive victory—and then blew on her coffee.
“Incredible, isn’t it? Meeting Lazarus and Elena, and this ship … Just to think that only a few days ago, subjective, we were there, on Jiog …”
Just to think that Jiog probably doesn’t exist anymore.
“Harris doesn’t have the effect on me that he does on everybody else,” I said. “We served together for a long time. I don’t see him in the same way.”