by JCH Rigby
Andy and I nearly fell over each other to fill him in, and he didn’t seem too worried. I’d always found him fair; he had more force of personality than anyone I’d ever met, but then there aren’t many shy sergeant majors, I suppose. Hassan rarely needed to raise his voice, and I’d noticed the senior NCOs and the officers were quick to take his advice if he offered it. A tough old bird, a real fighting soldier who had made it to the top, so the rumor went, by a combination of professionalism and plain hard work. Unlike a lot of sergeant majors I’d seen, he wasn’t just a parade-ground bull-shitter, he wasn’t scared of new ideas or new kit, even worse, he could spot a trash-talker from fifty paces. So, when Regimental Sergeant Major Hassan decided he wanted to talk to a couple of section junior noncommissioned officers, we told him whatever he wanted to know.
Like he’d said, it was the mention of the enhanced troopers that interested him. He quizzed us a bit about Suzy, what she’d said and what we’d told her, studying her from across the bar where she sat with her dice-playing cronies as we talked. She must have known she was being watched, but it didn’t seem to worry her. She glanced our way once or twice, then forgot about it and carried on playing.
Hassan eventually seemed satisfied we’d not been talking out of turn. He started to say something else, then stopped abruptly and stared over Andy’s shoulder. We both noticed it, but Andy couldn’t turn around without being obvious. I tried to make out what was bugging him, but all I could see was the noisy old Italian landlord ambling about the pub, his long braid still swinging back and forth. What was the big deal? For a moment, Hassan looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Did he know the old guy?
Abruptly Hassan tuned back to us, as if making up his mind about something. Leaning in a bit closer, he spoke softly.
“There’s something in the wind, fellas, and you’d do well to keep your eyes and ears open and your mouths shut. I doubt young Suzy’s doing anything more than gossiping, but mind what you tell her or anyone else. Now, I want you two outside my office after parade tomorrow, and I might have something else to tell you.”
“Does that mean there’s something in all that stuff, then, sir?” Andy was trying his luck a bit, but the fly old bugger didn’t answer. Putting that wide smile back on his face Hassan got to his feet and led us over to Suzy’s table. The company sergeant majors looked a bit startled by his move, but recovered quickly they got up from the bar and came over as well. Suzy eyed Hassan suspiciously, expecting another crossing of swords, no doubt. However, in a few seconds he’d won her respect, and the rest of the shuttle jocks,’ with an apology for his interruption, a tray of drinks, and a line of patter I’d never have expected. In no time, they were all the best of buddies, helped along by what was probably a little tactical losing at dice.
Hassan and his pals left after about another half hour. Andy and I were supposed to be off-duty the following day, however I found myself desperately curious about what Hassan might have to say to us, deciding to head back to the accommodation block a little earlier than I might otherwise have done. The two girls from earlier had left anyhow, and Andy didn’t join me; as he sat there with an arm around a smiling Suzy, it looked as though the charisma frenzy might be about to pay off.
It didn’t really matter as my mind was still elsewhere. The night out had taken an odd twist and there was one more strangeness that had me thinking. As Hassan was leaving, I saw him stop at the bar and drop off their empty glasses. By sheer chance I happened to be looking in his direction, watching as the landlord leaned across the bar until their heads almost touched. The holo-bull chose that moment to appear, making an awful din drowning anything the landlord and Hassan had to say. There was something about the bulls’ appearance, though, that caused Hassan and the landlord to look at it twice. I got the odd impression there was a red line round its neck, which I’d never noticed before. The image of the beast suddenly faded, gone in an instant, as if it had never existed.
The two men exchanged a couple of quiet words, and the old Italian tugged quickly at his long grey braid. It seemed like a casual gesture, until I saw the Regimental Sergeant Major copy the movement, tapping the nape of his neck, where a braid would have been if he hadn’t had buzz-cut-short hair. The moment over, Hassan turned for the exit and waved for his companions to join him. As the three headed for the door, Hassan deliberately ran his hand along the back of the stone bench by the fireplace, then touched the hand to that same spot on the back of his neck.
What the hell?
The landlord watched them leave, when he noticed me watching the watcher, he recovered quickly and gave me one of his trademark grins.
“Your friend’s right, you know?” Flapping a large hand in Andy’s general direction.
I didn’t understand. “Sorry, pal, I’m not with you. What d’you mean?”
“We did get here, you know. I’m from Roma.” He said with a booming laugh.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Leap in the Dark
"Right. Suit, vacuum, complete, one. Check the seals every day. Any faults, see me. Helmet, combat, one. Watch the sights and the data cables. Personal radio, one; battery pack, two. Keep an eye on the desiccant; if it turns blue, the battery’s used up. Fetch it in. Cammo suit, urban, lunar theater, two each. Course it fits you, boy. Right. Sign here and here, thumb there. Next stop, armory; see Corporal Singh. Any questions? No? Good. Off you go.”
I was pestering Staff Sergeant Dave Harris in the C Company stores one afternoon, and not for the first time. He was one of the few members of the battalion who’d done a couple of special forces tours, serving in the Belt’s own black ops Intervention Company before he took L5 citizenship and transferred to our mob. Harris was all right, but he always played things a bit close to his chest.
He’d barely paused in the business of shoving huge mountains of kit into the arms of a pair of bewildered new grunts, but he’d favored me with a jerk of the head toward the corner office. I mooched around inside while he finished up.
The door slammed behind the two laden figures, and Harris came through into the office. Chucking the stores receipt slate at his desk, he pulled up a chair and sat down. We both watched as the slate ambled through the air, bounced off the edge of the desk, and sinking gracefully to the floor.
“Nice one, Staff Sergeant. You any good with a rifle?” I said jokingly knowing I would get the standard response.
“Piss off, young Arden. I’ve seen your weapons test scores. This’ll be about special forces again, will it?” Harris waved me into a seat.
I grinned at him; not even trying to hide it. “Right first time, Staff Sergeant. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. What do you want to know this time?”
“Have you heard anything about this new program at Bragg?”
“Go on.” He sighed, got up, and picked up the fallen slate depositing it onto a growing pile sitting precariously on the edge of his desk.
“You know, the one there was an employment statement about a while back. They’re looking for volunteers for ‘an experimental program of artificial enhancement by means of reversible surgery.’” I knew the whole thing by heart, I’d read it so often.
“Yeah, I saw it. And?”
Stubborn jerk. He wasn’t going to make it easy. “Well, I thought you might have heard something about it. You know, from old comrades perhaps.”
“I haven’t heard much, just a bit about how many they’re looking for. It’s something like fifty people, and they reckon there’ll be only around one in 1,000 applicants suitable.” Regaining his seat, he lifted a different slate and started keying something in.
That took the wind out of my sails a bit. One in 1,000. How the hell was I going to beat those odds? I could feel dejection growing when it occurred to me that, probably, no one had any idea what sort of success rate there was. The noise of fingers tapping on the slate had stopped. I looked up to see Harris studying me intently, making me e
ven more anxious, so I tried another tack.
“Have you heard from anyone who’s tried for it?”
“You’re pushing it now, Arden. Though, as it happens, I may have heard a few interesting tit bits.”
“You have? That’s brilliant, Staff Sergeant. Can you tell me anything about it?”
He was up and off again, roaming about the little office, restless as anything. As if he couldn’t sit still. “Look, young man, I could tell you a lot, but I won’t. But I’ll tell you this much: If you want to go for special forces, then do it; don’t talk about it. I’ve had my eye on you for a while, and you’re doing okay in your section. You’ll get your second stripe before long, and I think you’ll go a sight further if you stick with it. If you think special forces is where you belong, then have a crack at it. Give it absolutely a 1,000 percent, and you might be in with a chance.”
Harris was speaking over his shoulder, apparently intrigued by a Chinese vehicle recognition image on the wall. “Remember though, whatever you decide to do, make damn sure you have a Plan B. Don’t set your whole life on it—give it everything you can, but if it doesn’t work out, then have something else up your sleeve. You’ve got to be able to come back to the battalion, or else move on; either way, if it doesn’t work out you’ve got to live with yourself afterwards.”
I grunted something. His advice made pretty good sense I suppose, but it wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. What I heard next was worse. Harris turned around and looked me straight in the eye.
“This enhancement thing—that’s something else entirely. Why would you want to do that? Artificial enhancement? Reversible? Do you think?”
His skepticism was sobering. “I dunno, Staff Sergeant, to be honest, I’m not even sure I do want it.” That startled me. I hadn’t let myself think it so far. I just wanted—well, what did I want? I wanted to be faster.
“Well, you need to think about that one, Steve.” I was that engrossed in my own thoughts I failed to notice that Harris, a Staff Sergeant, had addressed a lowly junior NCO by his first name. “But if you’re going to trust them, then think about this. Whatever they’re looking for, it’s going to be pretty rare. They’ll cream off the top few from Selection, perhaps, and see if they’re up to it. Maybe they’ll only take people who are already in special forces units. I don’t know.”
Harris started pacing again. He looked like a man struggling to make a decision. When he came to an abrupt stop he had obviously made up his mind. “Oh, shit. All right. I’ve got a buddy who’s—who knows this new mob. I’m sticking my neck out way too far just saying I know this, but I guess I can tell you this much.
“He hasn’t said a lot about it, but then I wouldn’t expect him to. Look. I trust this guy. He’s hard as nails, been there and done that, doesn’t take any shit. We did a few things together, way back when. He dropped out of sight a couple of years ago, but loads of people do that, and it’s not good to ask too much. He passed through here recently and contacted me. All he’s told me is, the programs pretty good but it’s not quite what it seems. Make of that what you want.”
I’d spotted the hesitation. He’d as good as told me his buddy was in this unit. One of these guys had been here? Recently? That suddenly made it all seem a bit more real. I tried to imagine what he’d done since he’d joined this gang, what he could tell me, what he’d look like and what brought him here.
Harris looked as if he wouldn’t put up with me much longer. I guess I’d wanted him to make the big decision for me, to say something like, “Yeah, Steve, you’re ideal for it. You nip off and start getting really fit while I make a few calls and find out a bit more about it.” Fantasy, of course. Nobody’s ever going to make the tough decisions for you; goes without saying. What I was starting to realize was that no one was going to hand me the answer on a plate, either. By now I probably knew everything the Army and the U.N. wanted its volunteers to know, and if Harris couldn’t or wouldn’t give me any more facts then all that remained was for me to make up my mind.
WELL, DID I REALLY want to do this? I didn’t know that, either. I didn’t really know what this Enhanced Human program would do to me, I didn’t know if I believed all this surgery they talked about would be reversible, I didn’t know whether I was prepared to be turned into some machine-man. I didn’t know if I’d like the look of myself when I saw my own reflection.
I did know I hadn’t really gotten over the massacre at the shopping mall in Nottingham. I’d thought things were under control, but I kept finding a black mood creeping over me, and that catastrophic afternoon in the mall would come back and haunt me with images of burning ‘glass, sobbing civilians, and dead friends.
I did know I’d been way too bloody slow and I was determined never to be too slow again. No matter the cost.
I SAT IN MY bunk staring at the slate held limply in my hands. I’d made the stupid mistake of enquiring about Lucy Chang, Molly’s mother. Some stupid idea of sending her a message of condolence. Idiot! How would that have worked? Hi, I’m the guy who got your daughter killed, and I wanted to see how you were. But what I did learn hadn’t helped me one bit.
One night, about a month after Molly died, while we would have been on leave, she had gone back to the wrecked mall, climbed over the construction barrier, making her way to the battered edge terrace where she had sat with Molly on that morning, and stepped off. Reportedly she had hacked her fantastic hair back to a blonde fuzz, but in my mind’s eye I saw that golden hair folding out behind her like an angel’s wings as she fell fifty stories, to hit the street right where Jonesy and Davy Hart had smacked down in the ’glass.
Perhaps it was time for me to take my own leap into the dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tapping Out the Primes
Thursday, August 16th
The cop who’d arrested him flung the door open, pushing him into the cell so hard he hit the far wall and bounced. The impact winded him. He didn’t resist when they spun him around, pulled him forward, and dumped him in a chair.
They took hold of him, one by each arm. He tensed up for a beating, but the cop on his left shifted his grip and put one hand on the back of his neck, blunt fingers digging in hard. Then the third cop, the guy whose face he’d spat in, reached into his jacket and slowly withdrew a frighteningly large knife. His heart stuttered, eyes going wide, knees buckling. They must have expected this because that’s when they took the picture, close up in his face with a retina burning flash. As his head swam unable to see past the bright spots floating in his vision, he was prodded savagely in the stomach and he gasped. A hand forced something into his mouth, a block of something soft but very tough holding his jaws wide apart, the feeling of something flicking against the inside of his cheek.
Another rough movement and the bit was removed. His watering eyes cleared a little. The knife gone from the cop’s hand. They let go of him.
“Nice picture, thank you, sir. We’ll have a retina pattern in a moment.” Said the cop who had flashed that shiny knife in his face.
The cop studied the screen while the saliva swab was pressed into a DNA reader.
“Here we go, sir. Clear pattern. You are Michael Yip, engineering student, nineteen. Wait—yes. You live in the college halls, and you want to be a systems engineer. You’re sponsored by ARTOK with a work placement on the Mass Driver.” The prisoner shook his head. No, that’s not me. Stupid. They’ll know in a moment. The DNA reader beeped. “And here’s the confirmation—do we have a cell match?” The smug smile fell from the cop’s lips to be replaced with a confused look. “Hang on. How interesting. Your eyes say you’re you, but your cells say you’re a liar.” The cop folded his arms and cocked his head to one side.
“What would a studious young man like you, Mr. Yip, be doing with a bag full of Chinese military software and a load of high specification slates, hanging around a bar in a dodgy part of town? Your saliva says you’re not Michael Yip, and, if your cells are to be believed,
what the hell are you doing with someone else’s eyes?”
THEY SEARCH HIM AGAIN, took away anything he might have even dreamed of using as a weapon, explained his new legal status, i.e. He didn’t have one before pointing out the cell’s cameras, ensuring he was left in no doubt that he was being monitored and how to summon help, enquired about his anxieties and the state of his psychological health. As if they really cared however, the book said they had to even if they all knew this particular prisoner would never again see the light of day. Terrorists never did, and the cops were in no doubt that anyone who had gone to the lengths of receiving retinal implants was a terrorist. They asked if anyone would be expecting him anywhere, offered him food, drink, legal representation, an offer he knew to be a lie, spiritual assistance and a medical assessment, before abruptly leaving him alone to think about things.
He would have preferred a beating; he could have explained that away. But what could he do now? What the hell could he do to salvage his mission?
First things first. He sat, breathed deeply a few times to calm himself, then began tapping a rhythm on his legs—at first with one hand, then with both.
THE KID BEGAN TAPPING again, the same rhythm today as on every other day. But this time something must have been different. The custody sergeant spared a glance at the monitor which showed the suspected terrorists cell. Reaching over, he turned up the audio and plainly heard him tapping his fingers, rest, then start again.
The sergeant was reaching for the audio to turn it back down, his attention already wandering to the vid of the latest ball game on his private slate when he heard the sharp crack quite clearly. It sounded like a tiny firework, or like a snack packet bursting when someone blew into it and smacked their hands closed. Or maybe just a sharp handclap. His eyes flew to the monitor covering the terrorists cell only to see the prisoner sprawled across the low table unnaturally still.