by Linda Nagata
“Court security screens for weapons and explosives,” I say. “And after yesterday, they’re going to be extra vigilant.”
“Yes, sir.”
I reach the end of the room and start back, passing Jaynie. She’s still looking lean and muscular, despite the months spent cooped up in a tiny cell. My mind flashes back to Fort Dassari. I think about the way she looked fresh after a shower, wearing only panties and a thin T-shirt that didn’t hide much. And then I catch myself. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Flynn steps out of the bathroom. She plops down at the table next to Moon and leans against his shoulder, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I can’t fuckin’ wait to go on leave.”
“Permanent leave, probably,” Moon grumbles. He looks at me. “They’re going to kick us out of the army one way or another, aren’t they, LT? Whether we get found innocent or not?”
I turn around again. “Yes.”
“Fuck,” Flynn whispers, looking scared for the first time. “Even if we’re not guilty? How is that fair?”
It’s not about fair and I don’t bother to answer, but Moon does.
“Hey,” he says softly. “It’ll work out, one way or another.”
I’m eyeing Jaynie again, thinking about what she looks like under her Class A’s. She scowls, and for a second I feel like a kid in trouble. But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking past me, at Flynn.
I turn around to find Flynn cuddled in Moon’s arm, her upturned lips brushing his, like they’re a high school couple.
Jaynie and Nolan explode simultaneously.
“Private Flynn!”
“Specialist Moon!”
“On your feet, now!”
Chair legs screech across the floor. Both Moon and Flynn look shocked as they jump to their feet, coming to attention, their shoulders squared and their gazes fixed straight ahead.
My sergeants are responsible for immediate personnel issues, for which I am grateful because I am not in a good position to handle this one. I put on my standard-issue stonewall expression and hope no one will see through it, while Jaynie takes the floor. She steps around the table until she’s standing right beside Moon and Flynn. “You want to fuck each other?” she shouts. “Because that is some twisted shit. We are brothers- and sisters-in-arms here. Brothers and sisters! And brothers and sisters do not fuck each other! Is that understood?”
Harvey emerges from the bathroom, her lips parted in awe. The door to the hall opens at the same time and Master Sergeant Chudhuri looks in. Meanwhile, Flynn and Moon bark in unison, “Yes, sergeant!”
Moon adds, in a tone of confusion, “It was an accident, sergeant.”
“Accidents don’t happen in my squad, Moon.”
Chudhuri withdraws, closing the door again.
Poor Flynn is horrified. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” she whispers.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I growl.
“Lieutenant,” Jaynie snaps.
“It’s not her fault!” I tap my head, but I don’t meet her eye. “It’s all the time we spend alone in our cells.” The skullcaps and my skullnet are always working. No one talks about it much, but one effect is that we start perceiving one another as siblings. Then incest revulsion takes over and there’s not much incentive left to try to get into someone’s bed.
But it works that way only when we’re living together, training together, patrolling as a squad.
“Now that we’re aware of it,” I add, speaking half to myself, “be vigilant, and don’t let it happen again.”
We wait in guilty silence for two minutes, and then Chudhuri comes in again. “Let’s go. They want you back in court.”
“Best face forward,” I warn them. “Don’t give anything away.”
We return to our seats at the defendants’ table. When my uncle sits down next to me, I ask, “So what was the conference about?”
He leans close, as if he intends to whisper something, but he changes his mind and writes it down instead on the corner of his legal pad, in tiny black letters: Carl Vanda.
The judge sweeps in, the bailiff calls, “All rise.” We do it, though I’m still staring at that name as Monteiro takes her seat behind the bench.
As soon as we resume our seats, Jaynie reaches for the pad, dragging it closer until she can read the tiny print. Then she shoves it back like it’s toxic.
“The court is called to order,” Monteiro says brusquely, and I get the impression she’s not happy. “Government, are you ready to call your next witness?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Major Fong says. “The United States calls Carl Reed Vanda.”
• • • •
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him in person. He’s tall and gaunt, with buzz-cut gray hair, a scarred face like a man who’s been in knife fights, a crooked nose, and electric blue eyes so bright he has to be wearing contacts or using an artificial pigment in his irises. His shoulders are square, his back too straight—broken and reset maybe, after the plane crash in Africa less than a year ago. He walks with a slight limp, favoring his right hip.
As he takes the witness stand, he looks across the courtroom, and when he IDs me, when those blue eyes meet mine, they make a promise. They tell me they are going to watch while my world burns down around me.
I’m not sure, but I think my glare is promising him the same thing.
My uncle puts a hand on my arm. “Stop it.”
This man murdered my Lissa. Carl Vanda. He caused her death as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger himself.
“Jimmy.”
The icon in my overlay indicating activity in my skullnet is glowing in the corner of my vision, and as my skullnet coaxes my brain to pump comforting chemicals into my system, my rage becomes a colder, more patient thing. I look at my uncle.
Okay? he mouths, while Carl Vanda swears to tell the truth.
I nod.
I kidnapped Carl Vanda’s wife. Lissa is dead because of that, because of me, because I dragged her into this mess, because I wanted to slam a dragon.
Major Fong begins: “For the record, your name is Carl Reed Vanda and you are the president and owner of Uther-Fen Protective Services?”
“Yes.”
She asks him to identify and review the contract for services at Black Cross, and to affirm his acquaintance with Blue Parker. “Does the contract name specific employees who were to be assigned to Black Cross?”
“No. There’s no need. All our personnel are fully trained and licensed.”
“Did those Uther-Fen employees who worked at Black Cross speak English?”
“Yes. Not well, maybe, but adequately.”
“Did Blue Parker request that the Uther-Fen personnel assigned to him be foreign nationals with poor English skills?”
“Yes, he did. The little shit—”
“You will express yourself with decorum, Mr. Vanda,” the judge warns, “or be held in contempt.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answers in drawn-out sarcasm. “Mr. Parker informed me the Black Cross facility was being used to develop proprietary technology and that he wanted to minimize the risk of industrial espionage.”
“Did you find such a nonspecific explanation to be suspicious?” Major Fong asks him.
“I find every one of my clients suspicious. Everyone is playing their own game.”
“But you did as you were asked, and supplied Mr. Parker with non-English speakers—”
Fong breaks off as a low buzz ignites behind me. It’s coming from the spectator seats, somewhere to my left. Everyone in the courtroom turns to look, but there’s nothing to see.
“Bailiff,” the judge says. “Summon security now.”
I’m up. I can’t help it. I’m an LCS soldier, trained to think on my feet. My squad stands up too as the buzzing gains a companion sound, like
the vibration of some high-speed windup toy against a wooden surface.
“What the hell?” a man shouts, cringing back against the woman seated beside him. Several other people cry out and then a mechanical bug with a cylindrical body smaller than my little finger rises on shimmering, buzzing dragonfly wings. Four limbs, needle thin and curved like pincers, hang beneath it. For a second, it hovers above the audience, pivoting to survey the room with a tiny, gleaming glass eye.
I flash on the fact that the courtroom is sealed against radio transmissions. So either the robo-bug is being controlled from within this room or the device is autonomous.
I’m betting autonomous. I’m betting a pattern-recognition program is analyzing input gathered by that glass eye.
My dad and Lissa’s parents are an arm’s reach away on the other side of the bar. Keeping my gaze fixed on the toy-size drone, I say, “Dad! All of you—down on the floor!”
They drop, while I reach behind me, grabbing the legal pad with Carl Vanda’s name printed in the corner.
It’s like the little drone was waiting for me to move. It shoots toward me, almost too fast to follow. “Fall back!” Jaynie shouts as I swat hard at it with the yellow legal pad. The pad has a big surface, but I almost miss anyway, because the robo-bug is not coming for me after all. It shoots between me and Jaynie. I barely clip it on one wing, but that’s enough to unbalance it. I turn in time to see it spiral into the front of the judge’s bench. There’s a loud crack as it hits the wood. The buzzing stops, and it clatters against the floor.
Behind the bench, the judge is standing up, her expression furious. “No one leaves this room without my permission!” A squad of MPs pours in. She gestures at their sergeant. “Secure the public door. Assign someone to guard the witness.” Then she turns to the officers in the jury box. All of them are on their feet. “Members of the court, you will form a perimeter around the spectators. See that everyone remains in their seat until they can be searched and interviewed.” Master Sergeant Chudhuri appears fully rigged at the side entrance, catching the judge’s angry eye. “Master Sergeant! You are the prisoner detail?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Ensure there is a perimeter guard, and then return the defendants to holding.”
So we leave. I catch my dad’s eye before we file out. He’s furious with the MPs yelling, telling everybody to remain seated, to be quiet—“No talking!”—and to put their hands on their heads. But he nods at me and mouths, Be careful.
Then we’re out the back door. Chudhuri doesn’t bother with cuffs. Omer, Vitali, and Phelps fall in around us as we walk fast past the judges’ offices. We get on the elevator and the doors close.
In a voice low with fury Jaynie says, “Goddamn it, Shelley, that bug was aimed at Carl Vanda.” And with a surreal sense of shock, I know she’s right. “They got Sheridan already, and today they came for Vanda. That bug had to be carrying a poison payload. You just fucking saved his life.”
“Quiet in the ranks, Vasquez,” Chudhuri warns.
But there isn’t anything left to say.
• • • •
Am I too paranoid?
A degree of paranoia is a healthy thing, but ever since we returned from First Light, I’ve expected to be murdered . . . assassinated might be a better word.
On Sunday, I was sure the president’s visit would be followed by a visit from his special-ops soldiers, but it didn’t happen.
On Monday, I never questioned that the mercenaries who came after us had come to kill me, but I was wrong.
Today, I was certain the toy drone was aimed at me because I’ve come to think of what’s going on around me as my story—but there are a lot of stories, there are factions in this drama that I’m not even aware of. One of those factions tried to murder Carl Vanda today. It would have been a public service, but I got in the way.
I wonder that the Red didn’t warn me. It’s not on my side, I know that. And it’s not always present. It’s operating around the world, allocating resources to affect the lives of millions, maybe billions, hooking in at critical moments and then disappearing again.
If the Red had hooked into my head before I reentered the courtroom, if it had given me just a hint, a suggestion to stay the fuck out of the action, then Carl Vanda would be dead now.
But I sensed nothing. It’s been months since the Red was last inside my head, steering me, offering me guidance. All that’s left is the automated nightly upload of my experiences. I’ve been left on my own. I need to accept that it’s going to be that way.
And yeah, when it comes to Carl Vanda, I’m okay with murder. A surviving whisper of conscience tries to make me squirm. It doesn’t work.
• • • •
In the morning, Major Ogawa brings the news that no one was arrested for launching the robo-bug. “No one got into that room without a background check, a full-body scan, and a reason for being there. Afterward, everyone was searched again, and interviewed, but emotional analysis couldn’t pick out a suspect.”
We’re in the cellblock. It’s early, and no one is in their Class A’s yet, but at the major’s request Chudhuri has opened all the cell doors so we can assemble to hear what he has to say.
“So someone planted the device,” I say. “Meaning whoever it was, they knew Vanda would be there, even though he was a last-minute witness.”
Ogawa doesn’t agree with me. “They only had to guess he might be there. A microdrone is like a land mine—a cheap and easy weapon. Even something as complex as the robo-bug couldn’t have cost more than a few thousand dollars in parts. Make it look like a tube of lipstick or an insulin monitor, drop it in someone’s pocket or purse—potentially very effective.”
There’s a derisive snort from Nolan. Harvey chuckles. Jaynie just crosses her arms and glares at me. Sure—the robo-bug might have been effective if I hadn’t gotten in the way.
Moving on to other things, I ask, “Are we on today?”
“Oh nine hundred. Judge Monteiro wants this circus over.”
“And Vanda? Is he going to finish testifying?”
“My guess? We won’t see him again. Fong put him on the stand as a stunt, but it was a mistake. He doesn’t play well with others. But we’ll find out for sure when court’s in session.”
Flynn is still dressed in only shorts and a T-shirt when she stands on her toes to see past Nolan’s shoulder. “When do we get to tell our side?” she asks.
“Friday, if we’re lucky. Otherwise, next week.”
“I fucking want this to be over. I swear I’m going to kill somebody if I don’t get laid.”
• • • •
Ogawa is right. Carl Vanda does not reappear in court, and the judge strikes his prior testimony.
Despite yesterday’s security breach, the spectator seats are full. I don’t see Lissa’s parents, but my dad is there, right behind the defendants’ table. He’s sitting next to a fiftysomething woman who looks like an older, darker-skinned version of Harvey—if Harvey were to put on thirty pounds, grow out her hair, and style it in a neat perm. When Harvey nods to her, I know it’s her mother, come down from Pittsburgh.
The morning discussion turns to skullcaps and the neural enhancements of LCS soldiers. Before the weekend, trial counsel was willing to let us argue that the skullcaps interfered with our mental processes to the extent that we could not be held responsible for our actions. That story has changed. Three expert witnesses do their best to portray us as efficient, rational soldiers, fully responsible for the decisions we make. Ogawa asks a few questions on cross, all aimed at enforcing this conclusion.
So by the end of the morning session on day two, we have conceded that we did what we are accused of doing and that we were responsible for our actions.
This has to be the easiest case Major Fong has ever prosecuted.
• • • •
&nbs
p; The afternoon is more interesting.
On the witness stand is General Brittney Ahmet, a two-star in the Pentagon’s intelligence hierarchy. She’s tall—over six feet—and rail thin, with steel-gray hair, dark eyes, and a grim expression.
Major Fong presents to the judge a paper document in a plastic sleeve. “Your Honor, the United States moves to enter prosecution exhibit fifty-six for identification into evidence.”
“Prosecution exhibit fifty-six for identification is admitted.”
Fong shows the document to General Ahmet. “Could you tell us what this is?”
“It’s a printed facsimile of a classification report.”
“Could you explain what that means?”
“Yes. When a document is designated as classified national security information, a report is issued indicating the classification level of that document, the reason for classification, and the duration of that status. The report takes the form of an electronic document, but it can be rendered in hard copy, as in this case.”
“And who prepared this classification report?”
“I did.”
“And what document does this classification report refer to?”
“I cannot name the document or its author in open court, but in a general sense it’s a document describing preliminary findings at Black Cross.”
“According to your classification report, you designated this document as top secret, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why top secret?”
“As stated in the classification report, the document includes facts and information that already carry a top secret classification. In addition, much of the evidence cited in the document is uncorroborated, and may well have been misinterpreted. As I said, this was a preliminary document, and as such it contained extensive errors. I determined that the release of such sensitive misinformation would create a serious security breach.”
“General Ahmet, did you classify this document as top secret to conceal a violation of the law?”
“I did not.”
“Did you classify this document as top secret to prevent embarrassment to a person or organization?”