by Linda Nagata
“You’d be dead already, Shelley, except I heard a nasty rumor your friends are holding my boss.”
Inside my vest, I feel the stock of the handgun that I took from the ship’s captain.
“You think maybe they’d trade Vanda for you? You’ve got to have some value. The great war hero. The Lion of Black Cross.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a deal that won’t go through.
I brush my fingers against the pistol until I find the safety; I push a little harder and move the switch.
“I’m going to let you up, and when I do, I want you to roll over, out of this rig and onto your belly, facedown, with your hands behind your back. Understood?”
I nod. As he steps away, I pull the gun.
He swears and shoots a round into my side. I get one into his throat. Given that we’re both wearing armored vests, I win.
It fucking hurts, of course. Not just my ribs, but my skull too, my pulse pounding through my head like artillery. The pain pisses me off. It makes me a little crazy, makes me want to pay him back for it, to pay someone back, and the next thing I know I’ve got the muzzle of my pistol jammed against the forehead of the merc whose face I broke—but I don’t shoot. I remember who I used to be, and I don’t shoot. The cumwad is probably going to die anyway, drowning in his own blood. I decide to push him over onto his side so the blood can drain. Maybe he’ll live.
Time to evaluate my own injuries.
Leaning forward again, I pull up my right pant leg, dreading to see what’s left of my knee.
And I think:
Holy fuck.
And:
Joby is a fucking genius.
Because my knee doesn’t look broken at all. I mean, it’s not like I could walk. The lower leg has disconnected from the knee joint, but the joint doesn’t look broken. It’s not shattered, it’s not penetrated.
The lower leg was always designed to disconnect. Joby made it that way. When the bullet hit, it must have detached on its own, failing gracefully with a reaction time faster than an air bag. And the pain I felt? That must have been the heat, the momentum of the bullet impact playing chase up my spine.
Joby promised me I couldn’t break the legs.
I pick up the leg—it feels heavy with the boot attached—and fit it carefully back into the knee joint. It locks right in and I’m able to move the foot that’s still inside the boot. Where my knee was resting, there’s a hole punched into the deck.
I pull up my other pant leg. The left socket is scarred, but the leg still clicks into place. It still works. I move the slider icon back up again so I can get some sensation from my legs, enough to let me know where they are and what they’re doing.
I have a feeling I’m going to hear from Joby when he gets a look at this data set.
My head still hurts like hell and I’m dizzy and nauseated, but I cinch up anyway, and then I stand. My balance is almost defeated by the shifting deck; it’s only the struts of my dead sister that keep me on my feet. I manage to pick up my HITR and the shotgun. Then I have to kneel to bind the feet and wrists of the merc with the broken face. My pulse hammers in my head as I bend over him, but I get the job done. Next, I go hunting in the dark for my helmet. When I find it, I pull it on, but I can’t see a damn thing. Delphi said the display was broken. I take it off again, pull out the audio loop, and hook it over my ear. “Delphi?”
“Oh my God, Shelley!”
“Are Jaynie and Nolan still alive?”
“Yes. The enemy has withdrawn again. Shelley . . .”
Her voice breaks. Of course she thought I was dead. What else could she think?
“I love you, Delphi.”
Wrong thing to say; wrong time to say it. She starts crying.
“Delphi, I’ve got another problem.”
Shima’s voice cuts in. “Shelley, go ahead.”
“There’s got to be cameras down here. That means there’s a record of who I am.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got a deal set up. Navy helicopters are incoming. You will be evacuated and all records of your identities erased. You’re still with Blue and Gold?”
“Yes.”
“You need to stay there. Guard the targets. There is still resistance on the ship.”
“ETA?”
“Seventy minutes.”
Halfway to forever.
“Is Jaynie going to make it?”
“We’ll do our best.”
Not the answer I want to hear. “Can you link me back to gen-com?”
“Stand by. . . . Done.”
“Nolan?” I ask. “You there?”
“Fuck me,” he answers in an incredulous whisper. “Shelley? I thought you were dead.”
Jaynie murmurs, “How many lives you planning to burn through, Shelley?”
“I don’t know, but I’m giving you one of them, okay? Jaynie? Don’t cut out on me.”
“Story’s not over yet, huh?”
“Not yet. But when we’re back on land? I’m done, Jaynie. I swear, I’m done.”
• • • •
Wind and wave and engine noise combine to cloak the approach of the helicopters. From my position just inside the door of the cargo hold, I don’t hear them arrive. I only know they’ve come because Nolan describes the special-forces unit dropping in on cables just like we did. The gun battle heats up following their arrival. A few minutes later, Jaynie gets evacuated, flown away to a navy ship.
The fight’s not over. I hear sporadic gunfire for over fifteen minutes as the decks are secured. Then I’m ordered to the foredeck. Nolan and I get extracted the same way we went in: swinging in storm winds on the ends of cables.
We’re both given crew helmets to wear on the long flight back to the coast. There’s an intercom, but the flight crew doesn’t speak. Neither do we. The less said the better, because officially, we’re not here and what we did aboard the Non-Negotiable never happened. An alternate history will be substituted in which the US Navy, acting on a credible anonymous report, performed an interdiction resulting in the recovery of two INDs.
But unofficially?
An upload icon winks on in my overlay.
Koi Reisman may have another story to tell.
I hope so, only because it might be a solace for Harvey’s mom to know what happened. She was sitting beside my dad during our court-martial. Now her daughter is dead and she won’t have a body to bury, she won’t have an explanation, because we can’t talk about Silent Firebreak—but Koi Reisman can.
• • • •
We’re out of the storm sooner than I expect—or I’m losing track of time. Delphi said I had a bad concussion and I believe her. I’m dizzy and sick and my anxiety is ramping up. I close my eyes, and watch the skullnet icon glow.
I’ve got a bad feeling . . . about what happened to Harvey, about this mission, about what’s to come.
I’m still wearing the audio loop from my squad helmet; the satellite uplink is in the pack under my seat. I use the gear to reach out to Shima. “Anne, you there?”
Nolan is similarly wired. I know because he turns to look at me.
Shima links in. “I’m here, Shelley. Sitrep?”
“Nothing to report. Conditions nominal. Things look okay on your end?”
“Roger that. We’re minutes from takeoff. We’re just waiting for you, Nolan, and Flynn to return.”
“Where the fuck is Flynn?”
“On an errand. Take it easy, Shelley. You’ll be here soon.”
The sun is shining when the navy helicopter sets down. I peer out the window. We’re outside the hangar where our plane is stashed, but no one comes to meet us. The hangar door is closed.
One of the flight crew speaks. “Orders are to keep your crew helmets on. Make sure you’ve got the visors pulled down. Wear them until you’
re inside the building. I’ll come behind you to collect them.”
You never know who’s looking, right? I guess Shima is feeling anxious too.
I lower the visor on the helmet and then stand up. Dizziness swamps me; my head hammers worse than before. I get my pack on anyway and sling my HITR over my shoulder. With my broken helmet in one hand and the folded rig of my dead sister in the other, I move out.
Even through the tinted visor, daylight is like a knife in my eyes. The pain leaves me swaying on the tarmac.
Nolan catches my arm. “You doing okay, LT?”
I whisper some obscenity as he steers me toward the hangar. A staff door on the side opens. My rig bangs against the doorframe as Nolan shoves me through. Inside, most of the lights are off and it’s as hot as the Sahel. Two shadowy figures converge on me, backlit by a glow spilling from the open door of the commuter jet. One turns out to be Tuttle. He takes away my dead sister. The other is Moon. He grabs the broken helmet I’ve got clutched under my arm and then deprives me of my HITR. “LT,” he says as I pry the navy’s helmet off my head, “you know we wanted to be there, but the fucking helicopter pilot, he wouldn’t drop us off.”
“I know that. It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Tuttle adds. “And I’m real, real sorry about Harvey.”
“Yeah.” I turn and hand the navy helmet to the crewman. Silent Firebreak is over. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Where the hell is Anne?”
“I’m right here,” she says from behind me. I turn, then duck my head against the painful outside glare. Shima closes the door, leaving only a dusky light inside the hangar, spillover from a glass-walled office at the back. Her olive-drab pullover is gone. In the heat, she’s peeled down to a tank top with her gray cargo pants. A sheen of sweat glints on her cheeks beneath the rim of her farsights. “Your last status update indicated a nasty concussion, so we’re keeping the lights low.”
The dim light is easing my headache, but not my anxiety. “Thank you, ma’am, but we need to go.” Anxiety can be a side effect of concussion—but I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on inside my head. “What about Jaynie? What’s her status? Are we going to recover her now or later?”
“Vasquez is safe in a hospital and she’ll stay there for now, but her prognosis is good. You can relax about that.”
From outside, I hear the navy helicopter lift off with a roar. “And the prisoner?” I ask.
“Not our concern anymore. He’s been transferred to a more official venue.”
“Then we need to go.”
“Stow your gear and get cleaned up. We’re still waiting on Flynn. She took your package to a courier’s office, but she’ll be back—”
“Are you in touch with her? Anne, she needs to get back now. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what. Not for sure. But I can feel it.”
Shima knows my history. She looks at me warily from behind the glimmer of her farsights. “You’re saying the Red wants us to move out ASAP?”
“Yes.”
“Lieutenant, are you asking me to leave Flynn behind?”
“No, ma’am. But you could tell her to hurry.”
“I will do that. Now stow your gear. Nolan, you too!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“But keep your weapons with you,” she adds as she strides toward the plane.
Moon’s got my HITR. I shrug out of my pack and go after it. As he hands me the weapon, an upload link winks on in my overlay. It’s Joby’s program, sending out the daily report on my robot legs. My gaze causes a status tag to slide out, telling me: Upload complete. But the link doesn’t close. Instead, the tag updates, informing me, Download in progress.
That’s never happened before.
“You okay, LT?” Moon asks.
“No. Something’s going on. Get your weapon.”
Moon is right beside me. Tuttle is a few steps away. Nolan is already beside the jet, loading his dead sister into the cargo compartment. Shima is halfway up the stairs, but she hesitates, turning back to look at me like she’s worried about what I’m going to do.
She should be worried.
“Get on the plane!” I shout at her. “Now! Before it’s too late!”
Maybe it was always too late.
INTERIM
* * *
DIVINE FAVOR
SOMETHING HAPPENED—
What?
—and now everything is wrong, broken.
I don’t know where I am.
I can’t see anything around me.
I can’t move—not even to lift a finger. I can feel the presence of my body, its mass, the sensation of breathing, but it’s a one-way flow of information, incoming only. Signals aren’t getting out, and I can’t move.
This should frighten me, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel much of anything. I think my eyes are closed, because the only things in my field of view are icons, and there are only two of them, so I know my overlay is broken too. One icon tells me I’m linked to an irregular network. I stare at it, willing a menu to appear. Nothing happens.
The other icon is my familiar skullnet icon. It’s glowing brightly in the corner of my vision, its steady luminosity a measure of the massive, real-time interference presently occurring in my brain.
Someone on the irregular network is fucking around in there and it’s not the Red. I’m certain of that, even if I don’t know why. And it’s not the army. They never dug this deep.
Someone else. Someone clever. I decide what I’m experiencing right now is something like sleep paralysis—my brain cut off from my motor nerves. The army didn’t know how to do that . . . or if they did, they never did it to me. Then I remember what we did to Carl Vanda, what Delphi helped to do, and my anesthetized emotions start to twitch, and I get scared.
Where the fuck is my squad?
I think maybe they’re dead.
Are they dead?
I stare at the glow of the skullnet icon and I try to remember what happened, why I’m here, why I have this feeling my squad is dead. Nothing comes.
But I don’t need to rely on organic memory. I’ve got a digital memory too that contains video of everything I witnessed on the mission. I shift my gaze, seeking a menu. I wait for it to surface.
There’s nothing.
Is this a dream?
I grope for a recollection, anything. I remember being aboard the navy helicopter. I clearly remember that. I think I fell asleep on the flight back, but later . . . I saw Shima. I know I saw her. I wanted her to get on the jet—unless that was a dream?
I remember thin shafts of sunlight piercing the shadows of the hangar, and the thick, sticky smell of blood.
Why can’t I remember more?
The glowing skullnet icon is my clue. They’re fucking with my short-term memory. They don’t want me to remember what they did to my squad.
They?
Not the army, not the Red. I’ve established that. And not Uther-Fen, because if the mercs were inside my head they’d make it hurt worse. They’d make sure I remembered exactly what went down. They’d burn it into my brain in high-def detail.
Who then?
I think I know. My long-term memory is still in good shape. I have a clear recollection of the kidnap attempt in the basement of the DC federal courthouse. I think these are the same people. On that first try, they used nonlethal ammo. We speculated it was because they wanted my cooperation. I think they still do, and that’s why they’re trying to ensure I don’t remember what happened to my squad. Another miscalculation on their part. I remember enough.
• • • •
Twenty or thirty minutes go by. Maybe an hour. With no time display on my overlay, I don’t really know, but things change. First, the skullnet icon winks out. Brain metabolism is fast, so in only a few seconds I’m in communication with
my body again. I’ve been slumped in a cushioned seat, but now I try to straighten up. My hands and feet are all asleep, my side aches where I’ve been leaning. Everything hurts, especially my head, and I still can’t see anything, though I can blink my eyes—so I know they’re open. The air I’m breathing is hot and stale. My guess is there’s a hood over my head. I try to lift my hands to test this theory, and discover my wrists are loosely bound behind my back.
I notice the vibration of an engine only when it stops. I hear a rustle of movement. Then a woman speaks. “Crow, be careful. He’s a dangerous man.”
American accent. Southern. Georgia, probably. A voice of authority.
Crow answers, a deep male voice, also American, but not regionally specific. Crow sounds annoyed. “Why don’t you wait outside?”
She doesn’t answer, but I think she leaves. Several seconds later, there’s a grunt behind me. Hands close around my upper arms and I’m lifted to my feet. I try a head butt just for the hell of it. This effort earns me a muscular arm around my throat. I try to kick, only to discover my robot legs are shackled. The arm around my throat squeezes until I pass out.
• • • •
Thin shafts of sunlight stab through my shadowy dreams, each bright ray the diameter of a 7.62-millimeter round. When I smell blood, I jerk awake and find myself in near darkness—but at least the hood is off my head and I can see again, by the dim red glow of round ceiling lights recessed behind thick glass faces. I sit up slowly, my skull pounding and my throat so dry it’s hard to swallow. I swear every muscle in my body hurts.
I’m in a windowless concrete room furnished in a familiar fashion, with a prison-style toilet and sink combo in one corner, and a narrow bunk covered in a soft flannel blanket against the opposite wall. I’m sitting on the bunk, still dressed in the trousers of my combat uniform, along with my T-shirt which reeks of stale sweat, the stench more noticeable because my surroundings are pristine. I look down, and confirm the bed frame is bolted to the floor. I also notice my robot feet are bare. The boots I wore during Silent Firebreak are gone. So are the leg shackles and wrist cuffs I remember from before. I eye the door. It’s steel, with no door handle and no hinges showing.