There was a gun on the nightstand.
Clausen looked ahead, into the shattered mirror. He filled the reflection, a tremendous mountain of a man, wild beard ragged around his chin, blue eyes run red, skin sallow. His hair was filthy with Capital rain, matted to the dried blood around his brow.
He was a monster. Tonight, he would kill the beast.
He turned towards the nightstand, towards the jet-black tool of his redemption.
The door creaked. The sound pierced the ring and roar, the haze of old pain and fresh whiskey.
A shadow entered the room, a silent man that slipped along the walls. He made no sound, moved so smoothly he might be mistaken for a play of light. Clausen still saw him.
In an instant, the roar was gun. The haze was gone. The empty hurt inside was gone.
In its place was a furnace, blazing white hot and turned out upon this intruder.
Clausen stood. The bottle fell.
The fury burned everything else away. Clausen stood, and faced the man who’d killed him.
#
The conference hall stank like chilled piss. Brian Clausen had always suspected it, even before a stint on the DMZ confirmed the matter. The moment he pushed open the air-seal on the door, that smell smacked him in the nose, and he understood, all over again, how much he hated it. The all-call had gone out this morning, one as cryptic and blunt as he’d ever seen: get your kit, drop your shit, and be here by oh-seven-hundred tomorrow, this message will auto-burn in five minutes. Now, priority calls were nothing new, but usually there was chatter before the buzzer, not straight out of the black. The teams would be told, ‘hey, don’t plan anything for a week or two’. Nothing concrete. Nothing formal. Not even where they might be going, but at least he’d know to stay on point. Hell, usually, he could hang around some of the logistics, translation, or aviation squints, and get a good idea on where boots were landing. There were only so many reasons a barracks in NORCOM would suddenly start collecting native Uzbek speakers, after all.
This time, though, there was nothing. No buzz. No chatter. No sudden uptick in movement around spook house. No new, friendly faces hanging around the officer’s quarters. No random guys with specialized skills suddenly vanishing. No ‘stay home’ recommendations. Hell, he’d been approved for leave!
For two goddamn years, he’d been saving up for this trip. A private boat, on the flat lakes of the southwest. He’d been cooking bacon - vat bacon - but, bacon, none the less, and debating going for a post-breakfast swim. Sarah’d been on the back deck, watching the cliffs drift past. Then the damn buzzer went off.
Sarah was, quite reasonably, pissed.
The worst part of it was, he didn’t even have a good reason, other than, ‘uh, oh, buzzer’. Fourteen hours into the best week of his life, he was back in the saddle, with two months’ pay down the drain, his fiance homicidal, and a whole lot of nothing to justify it. Sorry, honey, had to go somewhere. Do some stuff. Army stuff. You know, the usual.
This never got easier. There was a the teams were full of bad breakups, ‘evil’ exes, and drinking problems.
The doors clacked closed behind him, and he headed deeper into the conference hall. Normally, briefings were done on a smaller scale: command and intel would break down the assignment into need-to-know chunks, distribute these to the various teams. Team leaders would be assigned based on required skills, and given rosters of who to collect for the brief. Each day, more intel would trickle down the pipe, and the simulated training would get more and more thorough. Occasionally, a real gem of a pre-deploy assignment would come through, like, ‘learn passable Uzbek - you have two weeks’. Yeah, he was still a little pissed about that one. Thank God for neural imprinters, even if a man forgot what language he was swearing in after a few too many trips to the printing chamber.
Today, though, there was a steady stream of ASOC guys - Terran Provisional Authority Special Operations Command - a virtual grab bag of asymmetrical warfighters. In every hall he passed, Clausen got a glimpse of team members, and not just door-kickers. Translators, squints, spooks - even vertol jockies from the 260th. Every one of them was looking around with the same leery-eager glance. Every one of them had the unasked question captured just behind their lips: why are we here?
A familiar warmth spread through his body, battling back the over-chilled air. The momentary tension bled into fluid ease, as training supplanted instinct. His first response (nervousness) had been biology, a sudden rush of adrenaline as the body readied for fight or flight. What followed was the product of years of the best training in the Authority: instinct was channeled into focus. Instead of aggression, he had perception. Instead of nerves, he had clarity. It was like putting on a well-worn boot: it always felt the same. His stride became metered, fluid, the world blending past as he marched down the halls. He could feel the cold chill on the back of his neck, the tickling of the feather in the deep of his mind: here we go. He smiled, an instinctual baring of his teeth, as he pushed towards his goal. He was always most at home in the eye of the storm, even when he couldn’t feel the winds.
He stopped at the last door, just before the briefing room. He’d been here before, plenty of times, but not with ASOC. Last time he’d been in here, he’d been in fresh off the line with a Chasseurs unit, and the CO decided to use the tiered seating for his amazing “special focus on safety” briefing. Forget any jump he’d made, any mission he’d run: nothing was as hard as not killing himself at the forty minute mark (and thirtieth slide) of that damned briefing. There was a reason Clausen kept his own briefs short: ‘if you do anything that gets me a phone call, I will kill you’.
But this wasn’t an ill-thought-out safety brief. The ISA warlock at the door made that crystal clear.
Sure, to a passing glance, the door guard could have been anyone: just another clean-cut soldier in a gray duty uniform, with a surprising lack of patches, a little too much gray for his rank. To Clausen, and every other old hand in this hallway, though, the bastard may as well have had a blinking light over his head that read: “I’m a spook!”. The guy was definitely ex-military. Probably came out of the teams a decade ago, and held out on age with antigerone treatments. More than likely, the guy was straight out of Special Operations - the Agency’s dirty tricks and black magic wheelhouse, where no one kept records or knew any names - a warlock, for certain.
The warlock greeted him with a nod, and said, “Good morning, Sergeant. You’re a little early.” The man’s voice was calm, but his smile never met his milky eyes. Milky, because the data-lenses obscured his iris and pupil. The spook was probably staring through a heads-up display, right now, juggling a dozen feeds and letting the mask assist tell him what was important.
Sure enough, the man had a cortical, right behind the his ear, a flat plastic sheath over a dataport.
Clausen tried to withhold a grimace. Goddamn warlocks.
He pushed past the spook, with his best attempt at a respectful tip of the head. It wasn’t the frankenstein parts that made them disgusting, it was what they did. It was because of guys like that, that made people eyeball him twice when he wore his uniform. He was used to the first wary glance. He’d always been a big man. At just shy of two meters tall, and built with all the subtle grace of a barn door, he’d been accidentally intimidating strangers since high school. He’d just smile, and try and talk quietly, and try to convince everyone that the big angry grizzly they were talking to was really just a teddy bear - using a lot of “sir” and “ma’am” had always done wonders. That usually solved the first glance.
The second glance, though? The one that came when they saw his uniform? That, he couldn’t answer. At best, he could try and subtly point to the army insignias, and all but shout, “I’m not special police!” But the fact remained: to most civies, he looked no different than the espos.
And that pissed him off.
Maybe a little too much, actually, as he had to stop the door from slamming into the far wall.
He pushed the anger dow
n. It had its places. Aggression was good, when directed. It’s what let him shut down fights before they started, and end them quickly, if they did. He’d mastered the art of it. All it took was a growled order, a barked command, and most things tended to sort themselves out.
Clausen descended the steps of the conference room, towards the podium and holoprojector at the bottom. Few were seated in the tiered chairs, and most of those present were huddled around Sergeant Major Ruiz at the bottom row, as he sorted paper files into stacks. Paper files. Not digital, and all under red laminate. Oh, this is big. Paper files meant that this entire op was black-box, isolated in meat-space, where net runners couldn’t ghost the data.
Clausen kept his head on a swivel, sucked down the details in the room.
In each corner of the room, termite mounds of antennae spread into sea-spray arcs on the ceiling. Jammers. He glanced at his watch. It was, unsurprisingly, dead.
At this point, it was safe to assume that he was not, in fact, getting back to his boat.
Sarah was going to be really pissed.
Clausen picked his seat, three rows down. Too far back, he'd look like he was avoiding the briefing. Too close, and he wouldn't be able to cross-talk with the Lieutenant without being overheard. There was an art to this kind of thing.
He stepped over the first row of chairs, using his height to swing a leg over the backs, then pivot down, row after row. He could have gone around. It probably would have been easier, but that wasn't how Clausen worked. He was a direct man, far more willing to bulldoze a path than dance around the edges. For any question, there was only ever a single, best solution: the direct one.
For Clausen, there were two types of problems: solved, and intractable. It was not a matter of intellect. He might not win any shiny academic medals, but he wasn't stupid. He couldn't be, not in ASOC, definitely not as platoon sergeant. The meat-heads never made it past selection. This was a matter of how he thought: direct and efficient. A problem would be impossible until the moment it wasn't. The moment that followed, it would be solved, and no longer a problem. He might watch a puzzle for hours, never moving a single piece, just staring into the box of pieces. Then, without warning, he would assemble the entire picture, without a single wasted movement or pause for contemplation.
This served him well. Problems that couldn’t be resolved were worked around. There was no time wasted on on 'might have’ and 'should be'. Those were for thinkers. Clausen was a doer. He saw what was, what needed to be, and then made the former into the latter. He would boil the situation down to its base, its simplest terms, and cut through the haze like a blowtorch. This made him the a powerful asset on any team he served with. He was ultimate problem solver.
Except for the ones he couldn't solve. The messy problems. The ones without clean answers.
The drum beat in his head was rising into double time. There was a mission coming. This was going to be big. This was going to be nasty. And he was going to be in the middle of it. Right where he needed to be.
In many ways, this was like settling into his favorite stool, in his favorite bar. There was a feeling of belonging, of completion, of knowing that all your problems no longer mattered, because you were where you needed to be. What was coming was going to be hard. It was going to be lethal. But it was something he could deal with. He was one of the good guys, going after the bad guys. How this happened was going to be new, and terrible, but the rhythm of the dance was comforting.
In many ways, the lethal certainty of what was about to be presented in this room was a lot easier than the murky questions outside.
Sarah is going to be super pissed.
He buried the thought. There was a mission. He had to focus. He had to get in gear. People were counting on him.
There was a rustle to his left, and Clausen heard the sound of Poole taking his seat.
Lieutenant Nathan Poole was a study of contrasts, when placed against his platoon sergeant. Where Clausen was an blunt, Poole was artful. Where Clausen was direct, Poole was subtle. Clausen was an enlisted man, though and through, the kind of kid that grew up playing soldier, and withered away his twilight horrifying civilized folk with crass war stories. Poole, on the other hand, was well polished, well spoken, and well financed. He’d come straight out of the Citadel, still dripping Academy ‘old money’, prone to quotes of pre-Collapse literature, bar-stool philosophy, and a renegade streak of blue humor that somehow managed to compliment otherwise spit-shined persona. In another setting, the two of them might have been incompatible, but there wasn’t room for that in ASOC. And the one thing that had in common was that they were both exactly the kind of soldiers that needed to be in ASOC.
“Morning, el tee.”
“Good morning, Sergeant.”
From initial respect came camaraderie and then utter trust, the kind that all units needed at their head. A well-functioning officer-noncom pair meant the difference between a decorated unit and a dead unit. That wasn’t to say their partnership was unheard of. Rather, it was the exact output desired and designed by the vast cogs and gears of the Authority’s ‘leadership’ machine. Each set of unit leaders was unique, in that they brought different personality meshes to the table, but the output - stable, adaptable command pairings - was the industrialized result. It would work, because it had to work. The fact that, in this case, both men considered the other a friend was merely a pleasant externality from an otherwise efficient engine.
“Nice sunburn.” Poole said, as he settled into his seat. “Four months in the tundra, you weren’t half that red.”
“Can't get a sunburn on duty, sir. Damage to government property.” Clausen replied, without a note of humor.
“Right, forgot.” Poole answered.
Unlike Clausen, Poole was not career ASOC. He was here to punch his ticket. It was the difference between officers and enlisted in the community. Enlisted, once they passed selection, tended to stay in special forces until they retired. At most, they might get vanished into the ISA Special Operations Directorate. Usually, enlisted just drifted between branches, stayed in the same tight pool, went to the same cookouts, and even sent kids to the same schools. Each generation handed off a cycle of ownership, a proud tradition of unit spirit as old as unification. Ruiz had been Clausen’s platoon sergeant, when he was a punk kid. If things went well, Clausen would groom Rutman or Parvotti to succeed him. There were rivalries, sure, but every soldier on the teams knew every other, if not be name, then by type, and recognized that unspoken bond of service.
Officers, on the other hand, generally moved right through, on a rapid ascent in the ranks. ASOC, like its sister services, were a primo punch on the ticket to the top, and the climbers fought hard for postings. That had its drawbacks, sure, but it also meant a large pool of eager and capable young officers was at the ready, and only the best were selected. Perhaps, then, it wasn't that ASOC was a free ride to flag ranks, but that it was a showcase of the next generation’s fire-eaters, a proving ground for the few who’d been marked for top service.
Poole was one of those best. He'd come out of the Citadel, gotten his nice shiny first-in-class plaque, and immediately begun bucking for ASOC. A tour in the Pathfinders had warmed him up, and he'd passed selection with flying colors. He’d done two tours, the standard affair. One more, and he’d be out the door. He'd probably snag some staff experience after he hit Captain, try to land a line company if he did well. Clausen didn’t hold it against him. That's how the Authority ran, and it ran well. At least it ran better than scavs, tribals, or Pathies. Fucking Pathies. They were proof positive that there were worse things on this planet than ticket punching.
Poole asked, “How'd you beat me here?”
“Tremendous skill and terrible driving.” Clausen said. “Took the red eye, only stopped to shave.” He paused, then said, “I swear, if we have to pop the beard pills again, I’m gonna riot, sir. I just took off the soup-catcher.”
Poole smiled, and admitted, “I have no idea. I
was half hoping you knew the score.” Poole glanced back to the door. “Did you see the spooks?”
“Yeah. And Ruiz.” Clausen motioned towards the center of the room, where the Sergeant Major stacked paper.
Poole said, “Major Bareille was at the maglev. Looks like everyone in Third Battalion, maybe all of NORCOM. Someone called down the thunder.” Poole rushed his words. It wasn’t much, just a slight hurry, but Clausen recognized the heady mix of anxiety and excitement. “How’s the team?”
“All squads are coming in. I’ve check with the leaders, and we’ve got every head counted and on deck. I told them to get clean, get sober, and get into town.”
Poole asked, “Anything I need to worry about?” The teams tended to party harder than they fought. It was actually kind of terrifying.
Clausen made a show out of pulling up a blank screen on his scrambled tablet, and ‘read’ aloud, “Reaper and Scooch were located at a hotel party, dressed as, and I quote, 'sexy pinatas', being chased around by a bat-wielding sorority.”
“You ever wish you could unlearn something, Sergeant? Just go back in time and stop yourself from asking a stupid question?”
“No, sir. I get a memdope after every deployment, and tell 'em my stress is really high, please wipe me clean’. It does wonders.”
Poole snorted.
“You’ll be pleased to know that they're taking this really well, sir. Only three of them threatened to shoot me.”
“Only?” Poole asked. The raise in his voice matched his eyebrow, and Clausen could hear the implied, ‘They knew what they signed up for.’
“It was the first break in a year, sir.” Clausen said.
“I know.” Poole admitted. He lowered his voice, and added, “I don't know how you stayed in this for so long, Brian. Not with these deployments. Give me ten years of this, and I'd be crazier than that preacher in Tansana.”
“Radek? Oh, no, sir. You can't catch that much crazy in a single decade. You've gotta marinate in it.” Clausen said.
There was a tap from the podium. Short, precise, and not all that loud, but the room went silent, and turned. Down, in the center, a man on the back side of middle age stood. He was athletic, close cropped hair gone mostly to gray, but with the twenty-years-too-young bounce in his steps that screamed ‘antigerone’. The old man crossed his arms behind his back, and waited for the half-full room to come to rest.
The Sword Page 2