by R. K. Syrus
That made her accept the mission faster than a hare twitches its nose. She replied over SIPRNet “Heck yes!” The originator was Mr. Perdix at something called the Adaptive Execution Office, a branch of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Virginia. DARPA. Inventing nutty ways to fight wars since 1958.
Months later, Sienna would meet Mr. Perdix. She would shake his slightly perspiring hand while forcing down the memory of the casually worded memo describing a mission she was not supposed to survive.
Back then, on thick ice, Sienna and Sarge Bryan shivered in grungy darkness relieved only by the aurora. It surged above like clouds made of pure light.
“What Adaptive Execution did tell us about the mission—once we were on the plane and it was too late not to accept it—is our only objective will be to pick up these distressed explorers and whatever they found.”
“What’d they find?”
Sienna let out a spout of frozen breath so thick it looked almost solid. “We’re gonna see, ain’t we? Best guess is a digital optical module that got loose from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Years ago they put thousands of them deep under the ice to measure some science stuff in space.”
“And one got loose.”
“And popped up here. There’s rivers under the glaciers, whole drainage systems all through the continent. This module, it’s different. Changed. The super nerds inside DARPA want it. That’s why we’re here. And Sarge, when we get it, tell the guys, especially Whitebread, to be gentle. Don’t break the darn thing.”
“Got him,” Bryan said, his eyes fixing on something above the highest clouds. “Roger snagged himself a real fancy scRamjet ride from DC. Too bad it’s one way. He’s in a single HALO pod and comin’ down easy. Right on target for our camp.”
Good thing too. Sienna looked at her weather map. Satellite images confirmed what ground stations across the continent were silently screaming about. First big ice storm of the season, headed right for them. This one was tagged Cyclone Skadi, after a Norse goddess of winter. A katabatic storm, fed as much by gravity as the rotation of the Earth, it packed winds of 198 mph and temperatures 100 below zero. In enviro science class she learned climatic change only made these vast weather systems more intense and unpredictable.
“Let’s get these guys and get out of here.” Sienna flipped her electronic visor away from her face. Over the ice flats, she could just make something out with her naked eyes, about three hundred meters away. She jabbed a mitt in that direction. “That’s got to be them. Can you see it?” A faint glow came from under the ice.
Sarge Bryan shook his hood-covered head.
Jet afterburners must have dazzled his ocular implants when he zoomed in.
“I do. I see it.” Sienna motioned forward and led the way. “Let’s go.”
Miles in front of them, but made not any less intimidating by the open distance, the storm front advanced. Skadi came toward Sienna and her people, obscuring the horizon’s slim slash of day, swallowing the pinpricks of heavenly bodies and consuming the gossamer luminescence of the aurora australis in a curtain of cold fury.
3
TODAY – MARCH 19
VERNON J. BAKER NATIONAL MILITARY MEDICAL CENTER
WASHINGTON DC
The medCorps captain stares at the eagle insignia on Sienna’s casual dress uniform. There’s a faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip. That’s weird. She’s the one under intense scrutiny. The physician’s stare is full of suspicion, with a heaping side order of resentment. He looks at her with middle-aged man huff reserved for women half their age and twice their rank.
Sienna is getting used to it.
“Colonel McKnight,” the pale, soft-featured doctor in front of her asks, “how do you feel about your parents?”
She hadn’t been past the visitor’s security gate of Baker Medical for even a minute when she got the page. The summons she hoped, just once, would get lost in the jumble of the Army’s electron-based bureaucracy. The one that ordered her to report to the designated exam pod for a mandatory pre-mission psych eval. Baker Medical rivals the nearby Pentagon with its maze of complex corridors and tunnels. She found it easily enough, down a dead-end corridor in what looked to be the laundry wing, right across from a waste disposal unit.
It’s been a week. Ever since Sienna got the intel on what a minor Khorasani criminal codenamed Sidewinder might know, she can only think about one thing: getting to Khorasan with her team, kicking in his door, and kidnapping the vile man. Then making sure Sidewinder’s day goes downhill from there.
Tomorrow.
March 20.
This is March 19. She and Sarge Bryan should be strapped into a military scRamjet. Cold and noisy. Fast. Its trajectory will take it clear out of the Earth’s atmosphere in its parabolic haste to chew up the 7,000 miles between North Carolina and the Gulf of Oman. Instead, she’s sitting in an examination pod. Talking about her feelings. To an Army shrink.
OFM.
Sienna curses silently, keeping her thoughts steady. In preparation. Pointing right at her head is a Metcalf-Chang neural probe, fresh out of a DARPA labs packing crate. This could suck mightily.
The doctor taps his side of the diagnostic display. Sienna can’t see the doctor’s screens, but she knows they show dozens of diagnostic functions. The military mechBrain analyzes every input and tells the doctor what questions to ask.
The letters of his name panel glow on her side of the screen.
Capt. W. Jofi, MD – Dept. of Clinical Neuroscience
Dr. Jofi is a real flesh-and-blood person, not a virtual physician. He’s supposed to make patients feel more comfortable. Dr. Jofi, the pudgy tool of clinical neuroscience. But really, the machine is the one evaluating her. The machine will decide if she’s fit to lead her people.
This is a reverse Turing test. The bad news is it’s going to be her first frontal-lobe PET scan. The worse news is ever since she can remember, she’s heard something. An unvoice. Sometimes. And it tells her to do awful things. Always terrible things.
Some of which I’ve most definitely done. Sienna feels the tension of being cornered and redirects it into a thin curving of her lips. She hopes it will be interpreted as a polite, collegial smile. Oh yeah, Doc Jofi, when you stare into my brain, you might not be prepared for what’s staring back.
4
I can’t even call it a voice. I know I’m not really hearing anything. It has to be my personal issued ration of crazy. What else could it be?
Mind probe. No biggie. Like in soccer when you forget about your foot and the ball and just think of the perfect spiral arc into the corner of the goal net. Past this psych exam is an aircraft carrier strike group. And Bryan and her team.
No silicon psychiatrist is getting in my way.
The mechBrain wants to know if she has the right mindset for command. Will she leave one of her people behind to get the mission done? Will she lie to her friends and comrades? Does she have what it takes to deliberately send them to their deaths to carry out orders, whether she agrees with them or not? Whether she even knows their purpose? The more human she is, the less chance she has of passing.
And she has to pass. Sienna needs to get to Khorasan as fast as jets and hovercopters can take her.
Jofi repeats his question. These psych exams. How many since Junior ROTC?
“My parents? I’ll tell you about my parents. My birth parents are both dead. I never met them. My surviving mom, Annalies, is a retired enlisted. If that’s all you’ve got there, this interview is going to be short and sweet.”
As if anything involving Army paperwork could be.
Jofi remains a blank. He stares at screens. Reflections jitter in the oval lenses of his glasses. Text and pictures and biometrics scroll in miniature mirror view. That’s a whole Carolina peck of information about her.
“Short and sweet, uh uhmmm.”
Jofi waits to be told what to ask next.
He is just a sideshow, a prop. Like a cute dolly in a dentist’s office meant to distract little patients from the stainless-steel instruments and the wickedly curved needle coming at them, jabbing into small open mouths to pierce tender gum flesh.
Inches in front of Sienna hang the bifocal eyes and ultrasonic ears of the Metcalf-Chang probe. It is powerful enough to decode and strip naked individual thoughts. But not all of them. Jofi can only monitor the neural oscillations in her frontal lobes. According to Sienna’s West Point psyWar instructor, the older, deeper parts of the brain defy remote analysis.
“Oh, well, Colonel, I can’t promise brevity. But we will be thorough. We will.”
Piss!
Jofi’s eyes again track down to Sienna’s eagles.
“From second lieutenant to full bird colonel, O-6 pay grade. In under a year. By the tender age of twenty-three.” Lips purse. “Must be some kind of record.”
“Pretty average,” Sienna says back. “The military seems to bring out the best in young people. A little slip of a girl became knight commander of the French Army. She smashed through English siege lines which had been dug in for seven months. She rescued the people of Orléans from death by starvation and disease. It took her nine days. She was seventeen.”
She also heard voices. Probably not a good topic to bring up while trying to get declared mentally fit for duty by the most uptight psychoanalyst in uniform.
Jofi is not impressed. “Joan of Arc’s adventuresome exploits all happened a while ago.” He checks his monitor. “Are you feeling well, Colonel? Your stress index spiked.”
Dang, this mind probe thing is sensitive.
She deflects. “As for the US Army, I only got dibs on the women’s record. Union guy became a colonel at twenty during the Civil War. But yeah, as the youngest female Army colonel ever, I feel humbled and honored by Army Command’s confidence in me.”
Captain Jofi, O-3, studies his screen. Then, deliberately, he says: “Colonel Bitch.”
5
If Sienna needs to suppress any reaction, it’s a laugh.
Where does this guy get this crap?
More strange sweat collects on Jofi’s upper lip. He’s fiddling with his wedding band. He must do it a lot; his second knuckle is discolored.
“Colonel Bitch,” Jofi says again. “That is your nickname in D Group, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” Sienna replies. “And I got the T-shirt to prove it.”
“You allow your subordinates to disrespect you? How can you call yourself a leader?”
“A little thing called success.” Boy, she could give Jofi some sweet nicknames of his own just now.
Instead she explains, just a little. “It was after my promotion was made permanent. Army Special Ops have a ‘boys only’ tree house thing. Some guys started talkin’ trash. Just restless. Nothing I took personal. Sarge was gonna hurt ’em, before my ops unit, the Dogs, went and messed them up worse. It was more personal for them.”
“And what about you?” Jofi asks. “How did you feel about these insults?”
“Big waste of energy. I down-riled everyone. And Ortiz sewed me a shirt.”
And that is the most explaining, especially to a lower-ranked officer, she’s done since Beast Barracks boot camp five years ago.
“This frustrates you, Colonel?” Jofi asks. “Having to sit here in this exam pod? You don’t like talking to me?”
“You’re cleared to evaluate me, not my mission,” Sienna says. “There’s a large mobile-weapons platform filled with angry service people. They can’t proceed until the Dogs and I are on it. And we can’t be on it until you green my psych update.”
Her mission fob is a square piece of plastic. It contains her orders and permissions for Sidewinder. Three pinprick LEDs glow. Two yellow. One green. The head of Joint Special Ops Command in Washington transmitted approvals this morning.
“Normally you just input the results from my last physical,” Sienna says.
She had planned to spend more time upstairs with Roger. The Sidewinder mission window is marked in hours and minutes. There’s no time for dithering.
“You reassigned yourself suddenly. Away from Europe, to the Gulf,” Jofi dithers.
“Last-minute target of opportunity.”
“Your request for reassignment flagged this review. The one we’re both enjoying so much.”
She hates name-dropping, but she’s in a hurry.
“Major Roger Halley is upstairs in the Executive Wing, holding off going into surgery until he can see me.”
“I’m aware. I also know you and the son of General Halley are romantically involved.”
So much for name-dropping.
“You see why my evaluation is so important. I’m the last independent link in the mission management chain. If you or one of your group is KIA… Well, I’d feel just as badly as if I’d made the fatal mistake myself.”
“Probably not just as bad,” Sienna says.
“Just as intensely, I assure you,” Jofi says. “Likely worse. Because I have the burden of calm reflection and foresight. You and your soldiers can only carry out orders. Someone has to guide you. It’s a terrible burden.”
Maybe you should be in therapy.
“Did you say something?” Jofi asks.
Sienna’s own voice stress analyzer, her ears, tell her two things. Jofi is browned off, and not just at her and her colonel’s eagles. Something else is eating at him. And he’s going to take out his own personal frustrations on her. Just because he can.
Jam this!
He reads his next question. “Do you have violent feelings toward others?”
Seriously. You’re asking me that?
“It’s kind of a job requirement, doctor.”
“Some of these items are mandated. It’s as much about your responses as your reactions.”
“Which the mechBrain interprets,” Sienna says.
On cue, Jofi bridles.
“I judge,” the insecure paper pusher corrects. “Me. The machine observes. I am in control.”
It’s just like her mom, a career warrant officer, said: If you have to keep tellin’ everyone you’re in charge, you kind of ain’t.
“Let me rephrase. Do you have inappropriate violent feelings toward others, or yourself?”
“No.”
“Do you plan on killing anyone on this mission?”
“That’s part of what you can’t be told,” Sienna says. “But, my rules of engagement do not require a fatality.”
“Will you kill someone if the ROE allow it?”
“If they’re armed and a clear and present threat to my team, I sure will, unless my team beats me to it,” Sienna replies.
Jofi gets fed new questions.
“What if an unarmed civilian is threatening your mission?”
This is another crucial part of the mechBrain’s test. Not enough empathy and they write you off as a psycho, or promote you to general or admiral, depending on the Pentagon’s staffing requirements. On the other hand, too much empathy and you’re put on administrative duty. You’d instantly go from soldier to desk jockey. Forever. Either way, you’re out of the field.
“Not relevant.”
“What do you mean?”
“No unarmed civilian can make my team choose between killing them and doing the job,” Sienna says firmly.
“You haven’t envisioned every scenario.”
“You haven’t envisioned my team.”
“You have an unusual relationship with your sergeant,” Jofi says, trying to get under her skin.
In a private part of her mind, Sienna is more concerned with what’s gotten under Jofi’s skin. Particularly his fingernails. They’re gray, walking-dead gray. Something about that, besides the obvious gross
ness, reminds her of something.
Jofi does a double take at his display screen. “Your sergeant. He’s an unusual-looking individual, isn’t he?”
As Jofi slides so easily into racial prejudice, Sienna has feelings about hurting others. Namely this clown from clinical neuroscience.
“Sometimes he doesn’t even have to shoot people. He just stares at them with his scary eyes and they fall down petrified.”
“Petrified. Yes.” Jofi squirms.
He’s fat. But by now he should have found a chair that fits him or beaten a standard-issue one into submission with his flabby butt cheeks. He is uncomfortable. In pain. Goop under his nails, shaky hands, now this squirming.
This is the weirdest psych exam ever. Usually it’s a few inkblots, pee in a cup, and you’re squared away. Jofi’s acting like he’s covering his ass for a review later. Why?
“I’m going to give you a very specific scenario requiring a very specific answer.”
“Shoot.”
“You are in a burning building. Imagine Roger Halley is there, pinned down by debris. Your sergeant is there as well, similarly trapped. All things are equal. You can only save one. Which one do you rescue?”
Sienna knows this one.
“Sergeant Bryan,” she says without hesitation.
“So,” Jofi asks with satisfaction, “you value Sergeant Bryan’s contribution to your mission more than a decorated senior officer?”
“That’s not—”
“You feel closer to your mentor than your lover?” Jofi’s no longer reading from any prompts. “Do you have romantic feelings for the much older Sergeant Bryan? Do you desire him sexually?”
Jofi’s baiting her into losing her shit. An impulse comes to Sienna. An impulse to ram Jofi’s head into his console. And, it passes.
“All things being equal, I would first rescue Sergeant Bryan. Then together we’d save Major Halley.”
“Not possible,” Jofi snaps, checking his question list. “You can only save one of them.”