Outriders

by Jay Posey

  “I’ve seen worse, sir.”

  The colonel chuckled at that. “Close enough! Though if that’s actually true, I feel sorry for the poor kid that got blown up worse than me.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t blown up, sir,” Lincoln said, and he finally risked a smile. “Just ugly.”

  Almeida grinned at that. “Then I feel sorry for his mama.”

  “Colonel, I have to ask your forgiveness sir. I guess I’m a little behind. You mentioned something about me working for you?”

  “I did.”

  “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

  “I’ve a got a new command, captain. Working in the 301st Information Support Brigade. I’m heading up the 519th Applied Intelligence Group.”

  “Congratulations, sir,” Lincoln said. “I’m afraid I’m uh… I’m not familiar with the unit.”

  “Really?” Almeida said with mock surprise. “But we have patches and everything.” He gave it a moment and a crack of a smile before continuing. “On paper, the 519th is a support group, but it is in reality a special mission unit. It was officially formed only in the past few months, but we’ve been operating for oh, I dunno, about three years now. You work in the right circles. Ever hear mention of Grey Aegis?”

  Lincoln shook his head.

  “Victor Dawn?”

  “No sir.”

  “Element Five?”

  “Oh,” Lincoln said. “Those guys.”

  Almeida dipped his head. “Those guys.”

  “Not great with names, are they?”

  The colonel shrugged. “I had to change it so often, I never really put a lot of thought into it.”

  “That’s great, sir, but I’m not sure why you’d want to talk with me. I’m not an analyst. Intel’s never been my main department.”

  “The 519th isn’t a traditional intelligence apparatus.”

  “Sure,” Lincoln said. “They’re applied intelligence.”

  “That’s right.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “We can kill a man from orbit without spilling the cup of coffee on the table in front of him. But all the precision in the world doesn’t matter if we don’t know what cafe he’s sitting in,” Almeida said. “The one lesson from the McLaren Incident that everyone should have learned, is that we can’t keep our people off the front lines and expect to stay ahead of the curve. Information is only part of the problem; usually we have too much of it. We can see just about everything, but ninety-eight percent of the time we can’t tell what we’re looking at. Not until after the fact. That’s what happened with McLaren. Had all the pieces, didn’t know how to put them together until the bad guys showed us.

  “I need people with field experience, people who are familiar with violence and the what-comes-before. People with the instincts to recognize the pre-incident indicators, and who can do something about it. I need people to tell me what we’re looking at, before it happens.

  “Ultimately, we’re problem solvers, captain. Quiet ones. Intelligence collection’s part of the game, but we maintain the capacity for direct action operations as well. And that’s about all I’m going to tell you. Until you come work for me.”

  Lincoln smiled at the use of the word until. “For the 519th.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which I know nothing about.”

  Almeida nodded.

  “Not giving me a lot to go on, sir.”

  “Get used to it. The ability to operate on incomplete information is a requirement, captain,” the colonel said. “I expect my people to be comfortable living in that reality. You’ll be making a lot of high-stakes decisions on partial data, some of it likely false. You’ll have to act decisively, and you’ll have to make the best of the consequences, come what may. But…” Here he held up a hand and ticked off the points as he mentioned them. “Some highlights of the job: pay’s not great; most sergeants will have command of more people than you; you’ll be in the Information Support Brigade, which makes you sound like the biggest weenie on the planet. Oh, and, if you do the job right, a bunch of other people will always get the credit. It’s pretty much a career-killer.”

  Lincoln blinked at the job description. A moment later, he added “… and the downside?”

  “Responsibility.”

  “How much?”

  “A world’s weight, at least. I need a team leader. Someone I can put in the field and trust do the right thing without a lot of handholding. We move fast. The nature of our work requires it. I need someone who isn’t afraid to figure things out on the fly.” The colonel leaned forward. “Someone who isn’t afraid to act on a clearer understanding of fluid situations that require timely responses.”

  Almeida let the phrase hang in the air, an echo of the very words Lincoln had used earlier that day. Had Almeida been in that room? Or did he have people reporting to him? Either option had uncomfortable implications.

  “I’m honored that you’d consider me, sir,” Lincoln said. “But I’m sure there are a lot of other individuals out there better suited for that than me.”

  Almeida shrugged as he sat back and cleared his throat. “It’s currently a list of one, captain.”

  “That is flattering, sir, but I would expect someone of your caliber to have a, uh…” Lincoln paused, searching for the most diplomatic word he could think of, “… more robust set of options available.”

  The colonel rumbled with a chest-deep chuckle. “Yeah, OK, so there might be a few other folks in line. But you’re at the top. And first. I haven’t offered this opportunity to anyone else yet, cross my heart.”

  Lincoln looked down at his own hands, clasped in his lap. Most of his career had been in more traditional special operations forces, and while he’d certainly done his best in every one of them, he’d never considered himself to be a superstar or a stud. He could have easily rattled off the names of fifteen men and women who’d be better suited to lead a Special Mission Unit, as far as he was concerned.

  “And what makes you think I’m the right one for the job?” Lincoln asked.

  “I don’t think. I know. And I know because it’s my business to know,” Almeida said.

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  The colonel scratched his nose with his prosthesis, a gesture that would have looked completely natural if not for the gunmetal grey surface of the hand. “I’ve been at this a long time, captain. If you hang around the halls long enough, you hear names picking up buzz. Rock stars in a community of superheroes.”

  Lincoln’s eyebrows went up at that. He’d never gotten the impression that anyone knew who he was outside his immediate circle of peers.

  “And,” Almeida said, “I’ve never once heard anyone talking about you.”

  Lincoln let out a single, involuntary bark of a laugh. “Easy, colonel, you keep talking so nice, I might start getting uppity.”

  “Well, you’ve never been in the spotlight, never been singled out by the brass for exceptional contribution. Seems you’ve even been passed over for promotion at least once, maybe more. And yet, somehow, when I ask around, every team member you’ve ever worked with puts you in the list of folks they’d call in a heartbeat if they needed to get something done. There’s a pattern to your career, captain. The reason you don’t pop up on anyone’s radar is because not many people know how to measure what you do. You make the people around you better. That’s what I need most. A leader who gets things done and doesn’t need a lot of attention or pats on the back for doing it.

  “Bottom line, I believe in you, Captain Suh.” Those were powerful words coming from such a man, particularly after Lincoln’s recent failing. “But we can’t wait for you. I’m looking for men and women who can seize the initiative. I thought that was you. If I was wrong, no harm done. Better to find that out now.” The colonel brushed some lint off his pant leg with the back of his prosthetic hand and then continued. “But I can tell you this. The unit you just volunteer
ed for? Wherever they’re going, you’ll be there first. In some cases, to prepare the way for them. In more cases, to keep us from having to send them at all.”

  “The unit I just failed out of.”

  “You didn’t fail.”

  “‘Non-select’. Same thing.”

  “No, you did not fail, son,” Almeida said, “I had you selected.”

  Lincoln looked back at the colonel. “You did what now?”

  “I selected you.”

  “You selected me… out of Selection?”

  “Cheaper than setting up my own program. Budgets, you know.”

  A knot of emotion coiled and then bloomed in Lincoln’s chest; relief, bewilderment, anger. He hadn’t failed after all. And yet, the outcome remained the same. He ran his hand over his mouth, stroked his chin. When he spoke, he tried to keep his tone neutral and wasn’t completely successful.

  “I just spent fourteen weeks slogging through that course so you could pluck me out at the last second…? What if I say no?”

  “Then you get out of here and by the time you walk back to Housing, a very apologetic second lieutenant will be there to explain about the unfortunate clerical error that led to your premature dismissal. And no one will have any recollection of us ever having this conversation. But you’re not going to say no, are you?”

  “All due respect, sir, I died and then got resurrected a couple of hours ago,” Lincoln said. “And that was the easiest part of my day. Easiest part of my last three months. I don’t know that I’m in the right frame of mind to make any career decisions just now.”

  “I already told you, son. There’s no career in this. Just a job that needs doing, with precious few people qualified to do it. You might not be sure of yourself, but I am. You’re the right one for the job. But I’m only going to ask you once.”

  Lincoln glanced out the window again. He was used to doing things a little outside of normal. He sought it out. It’s why he’d been attracted to special operations in the first place. Some people thought it was a high-risk occupation; Lincoln had come to consider it one of precisely calculated risk. Every man and woman he’d served alongside in the teams had been willing to risk it all, but the ones who had excelled had developed a habit of leaving absolutely nothing to chance.

  But this was so far from normal it wasn’t even on the same planetary map. Forget all the things he didn’t know about the 519th. He’d heard the stories of Colonel Almeida, but he didn’t really know the man.

  The vehicle slowed and drew up alongside the curb in front of a low building that was nondescript even by base standards.

  “I’m getting out here,” Almeida said. “You can stay if you want, take the car back to Housing, try your luck with the unit. No hard feelings.” The colonel shifted himself to the seat next to the door and rested a hand on it, preparing to open it. “Or,” he added, “you can come with me right now and do the thing you were made for.”

  He paused long enough to let the weight of the moment settle, and then without another word he opened the door and stepped out into the bright sun. He remained at the vehicle’s side just long enough to don his cap and straighten his immaculate uniform. Then the door closed behind him and Colonel Almeida walked towards the building with a sharp stride. No hesitation, no looking back.

  Lincoln sat in the vehicle, strongly tempted to take the bait; to swallow the hook he knew was there and just see where it took him. But there wasn’t enough for him to go on. He’d dreamed about joining the unit for years. And now, on the cusp of realizing that dream, or at least finding out for certain whether he had what it took, this man he didn’t know was trying to entice him into throwing it all away, just to solve the mystery. There was no calculation to it. Lincoln didn’t have any data to calculate. It was all risk. All chance.

  It was crazy, is what it was. Lincoln glanced out the tinted window at the shadow world beyond. It certainly looked like the normal world was still out there, doing its thing. Was any of this actually happening?

  The car chirped twice, signaling its availability for a new address. A few words, and Lincoln would be on his way back to Housing, and the very apologetic second lieutenant. A few words, and this would all fade into a weird memory, something in time he could probably convince himself was just a fever dream brought on by the trauma of his very difficult Wednesday. Just a few words.

  And before he’d consciously made the decision, Lincoln found himself opening the door and stepping out of the car.

  “Colonel Almeida, sir,” he called. Almeida didn’t miss a step. He swiveled right around and marched back over to Lincoln at the exact same pace.

  “Captain?” he said when he reached Lincoln.

  All risk. All chance.

  “Sir,” Lincoln said. “Where do I sign?”

  Almeida flashed his broken smile.

  “We don’t like to leave a lot of records lying around,” Almeida answered. He extended his prosthetic hand. Lincoln clasped the cool metal in his own, firm grip, shook it. When he drew back his hand, there was a weighty coin in his palm. A challenge coin. A long-standing military tradition. On it was a simple design; an angular shield with a sword laid on top. Or, on second look, maybe the shield was a coffin. Along the top in scrollwork it read “519th Applied Intelligence Group”, with the nickname of the unit underneath. The bottom edge of the coin read simply “No Grave Too Deep”, which sounded just vaguely ominous enough to seem like a bunch of weenies trying to sound like tough guys.

  “Captain Suh,” Almeida said. “Welcome to the Outriders.”

  FOUR

  PIPER SWEPT two slender fingers across the panel to her left, switched the view from Sol-side to the Deep. Another deft motion and the view expanded to fill the entire station wall in front of her. It was just a constructed image of course, not a real actual window into outer space. When she’d first seen pictures of people working a hop, she’d thought they had real honest-to-goodness windows, big old panes of glass separating the watchers from the vacuum. Then she’d learned about what a grain of sand moving at velocity could do to the outer hull of a ship and she came to appreciate why no one had ever once made a hop with a real honest-to-goodness window. It was still a little disappointing.

  Most of the watchers preferred to look back from the station, back towards the sun. Back towards home. Not Piper. The stars had always called to her, always been her destiny. She’d spent her formative years staring up at them from her family’s little patch of dirt in the eastern lowlands of Peru; when she turned seventeen, she signed up to see how close to them she could get. It’d been almost nine years since and even though her current assignment was the furthest out she’d ever been, it didn’t feel nearly far enough. She hoped that by the time she was her parents’ age, people would finally take space travel seriously and really find a way to get out there amongst the stars. For some reason, her great-grandparents’ generation had celebrated just for getting off Earth, and her grandparents’ generation seemed to think colonizing Mars had made them a space-faring race. To Piper, that was like moving to the house next door and patting yourself on the back for being well traveled.

  Still, she was off to a good start. Right now she was sitting about sixty-five million miles from Earth, and, as far as she was concerned, maybe infinity miles from home. She really ought to call her parents, she thought with mild guilt. But talking with them always had a way of pulling her mind back Earthward, to oppressive humidity and too much rain, and to promises broken and hearts too often betrayed. Here, sitting in front of the crystal-clear projection where the perfect image made it seem like the hull of the hop had been sheared cleanly away, she could almost believe space was embracing her, inviting her further out, promising only hope, and discovery, and joy. She loved her parents. She did. She’d get in touch with them soon. Maybe not today, but soon.

  Piper cleared her head with a shake and settled in to work. The console in front of her glowed softly with subdued blue lines, gentle traces in the darkne
ss of Hari’s preferred display configuration, the colleague she’d just replaced. Piper glided fingertips over the surface, waking it and calling up the sensor suite. The console recognized her prints on contact and instantly reconfigured the layout of the screens to her liking. A message appeared in the main interface.

  Hello Piper.

  “Hey, Gus,” she said. Her coworkers argued both with her and amongst themselves as to whether Piper was a technophobe or just old-fashioned for disabling the voice features on the console, but they all agreed it was a strange choice. Neither side was right, of course. She was just an introvert and always got more than her fill of chat down on deck. The bubble was her one place of solace on the whole station, and she didn’t see any reason to clutter it up with unnecessary chatter. Gus was the perfect gentleman, only speaking when spoken to, and then only in text.

  Piper ran through her checkpad of diagnostics, making sure all the sensor systems were in shape and tracking. Technically it wasn’t necessary; it was part of end-of-shift protocol to ensure the next watcher had everything they needed. Hari had reported all systems green before handing the station over to her, but Piper always double-checked. It’s not that she didn’t trust her coworkers. She just knew how routine too often led to complacency, and the fact that nothing had ever been out of order in the four years she’d been on station made it all the more likely that everyone else had just gotten used to assuming things were working fine. She wasn’t confident that everyone was keeping a close eye out. And Piper always kept a close eye out.

  Satisfied, she settled back into the mesh chair, situated herself for a long shift. Someone had adjusted the armrests. Again. Piper loved that chair. She’d spent hours searching out its most-guarded mechanical secrets, learned the ways of every knob, switch, lever, and slider. Weeks of testing and experimenting had unlocked a comfort she’d believed, like sunrises and ocean waves, she’d lost forever. The adjustment was only moderately annoying, though. There generally wasn’t much else for her to do anyway.

  The hop she was assigned to was officially designated Veryn-Hakakuri Station YN-773; VH was a minor corp in the grand scheme of things, and YN-773 was pretty out of the way even for them. It wasn’t along any of the main trade routes. She’d only seen three big cruisers since she’d taken the job out here. Smaller craft docked more frequently, but never for long. Just to get tooled up, or to re-sync the latest bounce report on their way to whichever station was their final destination. Piper liked the little hop, though. It was the first one she’d been on that was synced up with Mars’s orbit instead of Earth’s, and even though they maintained a Terran day-night schedule and the orbit didn’t actually make any difference in her day-to-day routine, it still felt more exotic, somehow. And there was some kind of executive suite down on the lowest level that was off limits to all the techs and corporate peons like her, and that at least gave everyone something to talk about.