The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  -161 decibels when firing-

  "No." He mumbled, forced the voices back down. "Not now. Not my mind." The walls twisted, like a surrealist painting, full of melting clocks and looming corners, impossible angles and bleeding color, with the golden light pounding out of every crack and crevice. "No. No. No. Quiet!" He hissed, as he rocked in his chair, and pressed his fist into his mouth.

  There was a bonfire in his brain, raging from the scars on his implants. The hardjack was lava, scorching metal that pierced into his core. Neural imprinting. They'd used the hardjack to torch two years of training into his brain, bundled inside loyalty software. He'd nearly lost himself.

  -the glory-

  -the State-

  My mind! He bit hard into the flesh of his hand, tasted iron and distant pain. He rocked on the cold chair. They needed a soldier, and quickly. I had just the right wetware to get "unconventional". Lucky me.

  This was illegal. He knew that. This was horrifically illegal. It was a reverse lobotomy. Mind rape.

  -the laws of war forbid-

  I am me! I am myself! Not some soldier- The Agency man knew this. They had a solution. They didn’t have to train him. They programmed him. Programmed him into a soldier. Programmed him to be loyal. Couldn't risk the rats running the maze. Just stuck a wire in his head and reformatted the drive.

  Do they do this to everyone? Is this the normal training?

  -nine weeks, followed by twelve weeks-

  He vomited, a great river of it. He convulsed, choked, sprayed bits of silver from his mind, toppled out of the chair. Somewhere distant, there was shouting, and the prick of a needle-

  Darkness.

  Light broke into the void, descended as a luminous cloud.

  He opened his eyes, slowly this time. He was lying on a gurney, inside a clean white room. Blinding light speared his vision, merciful white instead of piercing gold.

  The sun vanished.

  The doctor pulled the penlight away, spoke calmly to the edges of the room, "He's stable. Christ, Colonel, looks like they jammed half the damn national archives in his noggin'."

  The other voice was distant, calm and level, like a therapist guiding him through hypnosis, "Thank you, Mal. Just straighten him out. Delete anything that looks like a hitchhiker. Like hell they're pulling this Franken-stunt on my op."

  "Yes, sir." There was a hiss, and something closed over his mouth. "Barbarism, sir, just barbarism..."

  Darkness.

  He was seated in his study, the fire roared at his feet. Waves of pleasant heat spread gently through his robe, a drape of warmth against the cold night air. The windows were open, the chill breeze stank of seawater, crushed over stony beach. With every toss of the ocean surf, the cool pushed back against the fire.

  He was alive.

  His hair was matted, sweat streaked his face, and every inch of him ached. The blankets were soaked from fever. But he was alive, and himself.

  The walls were disheveled, books tossed about, paintings stripped to the floor in great piles. He'd been robbed, he'd been vandalized, he'd been beaten. It felt like the one time he'd tried to work out, and woke up the next day, too weak to move. He shook, from muscle tremors he couldn’t control.

  "You stand." Lauren said, as she sat on the counter, above him. Her feet dangled over the piles of books. "They came, ransacked and pillaged, and you're still you." His head was wet. Cold. Someone had placed a soaked towel on his brow.

  He tried to speak, but his voice cracked, and all he could get out was a strangled, "How?"

  "You're hooked into the assist right now. They used it to ‘enhance’ the imprint. I hopped the carrier signal and tried to hold the fort against the hordes." She pointed to a picture on the wall, a new one, one of her dressed in medieval armor, beating down a dragon of binary strings. "You're welcome. You can keep it."

  He tried to laugh, but only coughed. When the shaking stopped, he dry-whispered, "I'll treasure it."

  She recoiled, just a bit, as if stung.

  He spoke again, clearer, made sure she could hear his sincerity, “I mean it. Thank you."

  She smiled, and gave a mock-bow. She said, "The castle is secure, sir. They are routed, and our army is in pursuit."

  "Our army?" He asked.

  "An army medic, anyway, and some amateur brain slicer." She replied. She was next to him, a glass of water in her hand. She said, "He seems decent enough. Crude, but effective entry techniques, and if they're willing to go through the trouble of scrubbing out the last of this dreck, then I'm more than happy to hide, again. Although..." she trailed off, as if lost in thought.

  He waited.

  "They do seem oftly fond of that 'memdope'. They just blast away at PKM-zeta. It can’t be healthy. You had a fond memory of a hovertrain station, I think. Something to do with balloons?" She asked, as she began to stack the books back onto their shelves.

  "I did?" Firenze asked. It didn't sound familiar.

  "Pretty sure you did. Obviously, not anymore." She shrugged. "Nasty little worm they stuck in you, liked to bury itself in essential system files and favorite libraries, so you wouldn't pluck it out. Gone now, and I have no idea why. You should ask the old man when you wake up. The one with the eagle on his shoulders."

  "When I wake up?" Firenze asked. "I'm dreaming?"

  "Not for long. Brace for it, buddy, here comes the pain train-"

  She vanished, disintegrated into a wall of digital noise. The world shattered, spun- Hardjack pulled, forced disconnect. He could see the code. He surfaced-

  He opened his eyes, again, and gasped for air like a drowned man.

  He was seated on a reclining chair- no, a hospital bed, tilted upwards. He was sore, but for the first time in – how long – he felt human. There was no ringing, no golden tunnel, no chorus of voices. Was that a hallucination?

  Standing across the room from him, was an old man, close cropped hair turned mostly gray. The man was aged, but still powerfully built. His bearing was martial, and when he turned, Firenze got a good look at the shining emblems on his uniform jacket: eagles.

  Colonel. Paygrade O-6. The voices whispered.

  "Good morning, Mister Firenze. You had us a bit concerned." The man stated, and pulled up a chair to the side of the bed. He exuded an easy confidence, not bravado or arrogance, but a simple, assured presence. "I'm Colonel Halstead, commander of this dog and pony show."

  Reflexively, Firenze tried to salute, but his arm seized up, as muscles fought memory.

  Halstead grimaced, and said, "No, no need for that. You're not military."

  "Tell that-" Firenze broke out into a coughing fit. "Tell that to the guys who turned my brain to soup." He slumped back, exhausted.

  Halstead said, "That was... a very wrong choice. I did not order, anticipate, nor agree, to that decision. This being my operation, I have seen fit to undo it. Your head is clear, Grant, and you have both my sincerest apology and assurance, that once this is over, my boot, and a JAG officer, will be firmly planted in the ass of the man who ordered it."

  Something about the dry way the colonel promised violence made Firenze laugh, in spite of himself. He quickly snapped back into a glare. You're not getting off that easy, Mister Colonel Halstead, sir. Your people still put me here.

  The colonel sighed, leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees. Calmly, he said, "I know you've got little reason to believe me, not after the Agency decided to give you the PR tour, but we are the good guys, here. We're trying to save lives, and I've been told that you are the absolute best chance we have to break through some pretty nasty ICE."

  Firenze couldn't speak, so he just stared. Continue.

  "I'm going to shoot straight with you. A soldier gets told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and then he does it. A unit like this gets a little more leeway on the when and how, but everything else? It’s prescriptive. You, you're not a soldier. You're a goddamn civilian with a textbook boot-camp stuck in his brain, dressed up, and thrown to the wol
ves. You still reserve your right to know, and to say no."

  "Why?"

  "Because I need you, my men need you, and a lot of civilians you don't know, need you. Because you're a college kid with a known pattern of peeling open blackboxes and poking in the places you shouldn't. Your profile says you're smart, you're driven, you want to know everything about anything, and that you won't fit into a unit like mine. The Agency thinks the best way to get compliance is with a blowtorch to the hippocampus." Halstead shrugged. "I think the best way to get compliance is to give you every reason to work with me, and lay it out, clear and simple."

  The colonel continued, "First off, do you remember how you got here? Do you remember anything since you got off the flitter?"

  There was a room, white, with the colored lines on the walls, and the rows of blue monitors- then that room was flying, and the monitors were windows, looking over the swirling clouds, and it was beautiful- the cabin was a bus, trundling through the grey downpour and rutted roads- there was a white room, rotting, and the golden tunnel. Firenze shook his head, slowly. "Not really. Just... a blur. A really shitty blur."

  "After you got off the bus, you showed odd signs: responded to things that weren't there, yelled, twitched, the whole nine yards. I had you brought down to the infirmary. Good thing, too, because you went into a seizure right after." Halstead pulled out a datacard, placed it on Firenze's blanketed lap. "According to doc and the medbots, something went wrong in the imprint process. They tried to use your hardjack to slide in a lifetime of soldiering experience, plus some additional operational data – encryption standards, a few classes you haven't taken on netsec – but there was some sort of reaction between the imprint, your assist mask, and the loyalty worm they slipped in there. Doc hadn't seen anything like it, but it was like your memories had their own immune system-"

  Firenze blinked, confused.

  "Don't quote me on that, I'm not the doc. What matters is, your head started trying to reject the foreign data. The command they inserted was simple, 'You will not betray the State.' It's dirty pool, but I can get where it would come from. A lot of lives are going to ride on you, and the Agency isn't the kind to trust, when they can verify." Halstead looked very tired as he explained, almost like a father trying to make up for the fact that his son had taken the car and run over Firenze's dog. Except it wasn't my dog that got run over. It was me.

  "Sir?" Firenze interrupted, as he finally got his mental footing back. "This is... fucked up. Why me? If they think they need to shove shackles in my skull, why bring me? Why not use someone from your team?"

  "I asked that, myself. Repeatedly." The colonel shrugged. "Remember what I said about soldiers? Sometimes we just have to do, and don't get a reason. Best answer I ever got was that someone, somewhere, decided that you were God's gift to counter-AI hacking, and based on the target profile, it became imperative to acquire you. It was decided that it was easier to make you into a soldier, than to make a soldier into you."

  "So I get screwed?"

  "Bingo. Welcome to the army." Halstead commented. "Three hots and cot, and you get to save the world and shoot bad guys. There are some perks."

  "So, I'm here, and I'm not leaving?"

  "Yep." The colonel said, as he leaned back in his chair. "We're not playing by the Agency rules, though. We went in there, cut out the brain worm, and left most of the training. You've got the data for soldiering, but you're still not a soldier. Training is going to be hell on you, trying to catch your body up to your brain, and teach you to use those things locked up there." The colonel tipped his head, and asked, slyly, "So, what's the beam steering time of the PAGP99 radar?"

  "Approximately eight nanoseconds." Firenze replied, automatically, as if someone had smacked his knee with a hammer, to make it kick. He recoiled in horror a second later. "That's creepy."

  "Yes, yes it is." Halstead agreed. "It takes years of training, learning, and experience to get the kind of data you've got in your head. I'm partly impressed, and partly concerned. You can't just 'make' a soldier."

  "I don't know, sir." Firenze replied. Even here, sitting in the infirmary, with the beeping band on his head, and the dull ache through his body, he turned towards theory. It was comforting, and let him ignore the fact that practical application had just mugged him in a dark philosophical alley. "I think I'm decent evidence you could."

  "Bah. You're not a soldier, kid. If you were, our entire talk would consist of, 'There's a mission, you're on it, get your kit, and be ready by oh-dark-thirty.' Knowledge doesn't make you a soldier, any more than fighting does. It's an entire holistic, comprising both mind and body." Halstead explained. "Consider the gangster and the soldier: both fight for territory, wear symbolic colors, keep a code of honor, and are willing to kill, and die, for their cause. Do you know the difference?"

  Equipment? "Not really."

  "All of those things are what they do, not why they do them. While not everyone in the world can be a fighter, a warrior – some people are simply too timid, too herd-minded – and that's a good thing – even less are capable of fighting for a reason that is bereft of self. A soldier does not fight for himself, or his pride, or any other thing he can gain. He gains nothing but the satisfaction of sacrifice. A soldier gives up himself to the unit, to the flag, to the Articles, in order to protect the people back home. He endures hell and hardship, working hand in hand with his brothers and sisters, so that some theoretical someone, thousands of kilometers away, can grow up safe and secure, and never have to make these same sacrifices. No knowledge, no tools, can make you choose to do this. Those things, and they are things, only make you more able to succeed. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "I think so." A lot of fancy words to explain how you shooting someone is better than someone else shooting someone. Still, there was a certain poetry in it, in an archaic "banners and glory" kind of way. It might help these men sleep at night, and they had pulled the virus back out of his head, so there was no need to be rude.

  "Further, if the mindset of a soldier can be given, like they tried to do with you, just like a rifle or a uniform, then it is no longer a choice, and is just a thing. And people who kill for things have never particularly impressed me – mercenaries, gangsters, murderers, and warlords – the worst of the worst. I'm glad you had that allergic reaction, son, I actually am. It gives me a certain hope that you can't simply imprint these intangibles. They have to choose."

  "You want me to choose to be one of your soldiers?" Firenze asked, incredulous. You want me to want to be here?

  "I need you to be, Grant. I wanted one of mine for this. I got you, and that was that. You're the only man for this job, now, and I need you to step up to bat, or a lot of good people will die." The colonel's voice was soft, comforting, but with steel underneath, like a doctor giving the terminal diagnosis. You're dead, but we're sorry.

  "And if I can't be that guy? If I don't cut it?" Firenze asked, defiance and worry mixing in his battered mind.

  Halstead nodded, and replied, "Then I cut you from the mission, and we try it without you. Most likely, you return to the tender care of the Agency, and my team goes off and fails to save a lot of civilians. A whole mess of people die, your life is ruined, and I'll haunt your ass in prison."

  Firenze laughed, even as the pit in his stomach grew. Not just me. If I fail here, everyone loses. That point had been quite clear. He had a choice, but not a choice. "I'll do my best, sir."

  Halstead nodded. From his frown, Firenze could tell that wasn't the answer the colonel had wanted, but it was one he accepted. "I'll take that, for now. To be clear: training will be hell. For whatever strengths your mind has, your body is utterly unprepared, and we will drain that weakness from you. You will be dropped into high seas, desperate not to drown. We will make you swim. You will do in two months what should take years. You will do this because your hardware makes you uniquely able. You will do this, because you must."

  "There are non-negotiables here. You wi
ll not contact the outside world. Our mission is secret, and we are under a communications blackout. The enemy we face has spies all about the net, and they will kill hundreds of people if they learn what we're planning. You will not contact anyone outside this facility, nor access any system. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes." Firenze agreed. "What about internal systems – can I keep my box?"

  "Absolutely. That's part of your selling point, kid. Just keep it off the net, too. Remember, lives will be lost if you break that order."

  "I understand."

  "Good. Further, you will learn more about the target and the mission as it arises. Before we begin, you will have all the data you could possibly want, and know it far better than you ever desired. That data will be presented as required by the mission, and as we achieve it. You will not go digging for more."

  "I thought you said-"

  "You're not a soldier, but this is a soldier's mission. I'll let you grow back your hair, I'll let you keep your room as a civilian dormitory, I'll even let you stay away from salutes, but you will engage in military missions according to military protocols. This is not a game. Lives will be lost without cohesion.

  "Finally, and this is critical..." the colonel trailed off, and he glanced towards the door, subconscious worry floating to the surface for the first time, "There is another non-military asset on this mission. He is an Agency contractor, a temporary ally providing a service to this government. Without him, we wouldn't know about this target, or the risk to the people involved. However," Halstead's voice hardened, "he is an enemy agent, a criminal, a terrorist. He is a master manipulator, playing to his own end. You will avoid him. You will not contact him. You will not speak to him, or allow him to speak to you, without one of my officers present. If he speaks to you, you will immediately report it."

  "Sir?" Firenze asked. "How bad could this guy-"

  Halstead's glare said everything, but he continued, "He is possibly the single most vile actor I've ever encountered. He has the blood of uncounted innocent on his hands. He is no soldier, but he is a killer, and he has absolutely no remorse nor scruples. Right now, his goals and ours align, and so he's playing nice. Once this is over, he will answer for his crimes, and he knows this. He will do anything he can to escape that. He will use you, hurt you, hurt those near you, to gain leverage. You cannot anticipate the level of depravity involved, son. If you see him, you run – don't walk, run – away."