by P. R. Adams
Rimes wiped tears away and fought back a curse as the video image turned to static. “Dad?”
The static resolved into Cleo’s face again. “I said some things over the years hurt you.” His jaw muscles moved, strings slithering beneath a thin sheet of worn leather. “Ain’t never accepted you as a man. Ain’t…never accepted you as…my son.”
Rimes shook away the words. He didn’t need them, not with time so short. “I just wanted to say—”
“Don’t matter, the past. Don’t matter, none of it, but I’m sorry for my failings.” Cleo wheezed weakly, and the first hint of fear slipped into his eyes. “Goodbye, Jackson. You’re a damned good son.”
“I—”
Cleo’s hand twitched and the video connection terminated.
Saying goodbye seemed to mean so much to Cleo at the end. Rimes wondered if it did, really.
Did the Harpers miss out on the feeling of that last connection when they were marched off for execution? Were they like Cleo and me at the end, just regular, vulnerable folk, not billionaires?
Rimes shook off the gloom. An ocean of lights glittered beyond the parking lot. From where he stood, they were bright enough to light up the city, but they couldn’t really drive away the darkness, not for those living beneath them.
Atlanta was trapped by the economic malaise plaguing the world, stripping governments of revenue and encumbering them with debt. The city was collapsing beneath its own weight, the millions of inhabitants and their needs and the lack of opportunity. No jobs, no hope.
What can we do? There’s nothing left elsewhere. The choice seems to be between chaos and surrender to oblivion. Is that all we’ll ever have anymore?
“Captain Rimes?” Barlowe’s voice was loud in the silence.
Rimes turned. “It’s Jack, Ladell. And I’m a lieutenant.”
Barlowe’s face was tight, haggard, the cherubic innocence that had once made him a target for harassment among the Commandos was gone. He was another victim of failed leadership. “Sorry. Dimon called you—”
“That wasn’t Dimon speaking.”
Barlowe’s mouth hung open. “But that was her voice—”
“Her voice, yes. But someone was using her body, speaking through her. His name’s Perditori. He’s a genie. A powerful genie.”
“Controlling Dimon’s body?” Barlowe rubbed his arms absently.
“Control the mind, you control the body. Perditori was behind the X-17 purchase and the orbital shipyard raid three years ago. You hear about the raid?”
“We got news feeds in Leavenworth. They actually treated me okay there, considering.” Barlowe’s eyes dropped to the floor. He looked up again, squinting, close to tears. “Thanks for what you did.”
I can’t imagine what you went through, being forced into something that led to so many deaths. “You were a good person in a bad situation. What Weatherford did to you…”
Barlowe flinched, then the tension left his body.
They had a complicated relationship, I guess.
Barlowe massaged his eyes. “So this Perditori knows you?”
“He claims he knows me from different points in time.”
Barlowe laughed. It was almost a bark, a challenge against the insanity of Rimes’s words. “He can see through time?”
“He…really does seem to see the future at times.” Rimes grasped air with his right hand, as if he might seize it and draw the truth from it, then waved away the thought. How can I expect him to understand what I can’t explain? “Or something along those lines. And he’s never completely sure of when he is. The point is, even though he and his genies stole those ships and fled Earth, he’s apparently still a problem.”
Barlowe’s face twitched; he massaged his cheek self-consciously. “Okay. I guess it makes more sense now. Outside the recruitment effort, we didn’t know what was going on. Dimon…well, she never really made any sense. I guess she was a genie too?”
Those eyes. “I think so. We should get a DNA report before too long to confirm it. Did she ever seem special?”
“Smart, yeah. Maybe above-average intuition? Like she just knew what was going to happen or what would give you the best results. If this guy was in her head all the time, though, maybe that was him.”
“We’ll never know.” Rimes looked around the waiting room. A middle-aged couple sat near the admittance desk holding each other’s hands. An elderly man sat not far away from them, absently running a hand through thinning hair. A young woman clutching a blanket-wrapped infant sat at the opposite end of the room. They were all well-dressed, generally healthy looking. The only folks who can afford treatment at a place like this.
“No offense, but I’d been expecting Delta. Commandos…I’m not sure how that’s going to go over.”
Rimes grunted. “Politics. Look, Barlowe, I need to understand what happened here. When did you start working for IB? How are you even out of Leavenworth?”
Barlowe lowered his head, but not fast enough to hide a bitter frown. “I had a good enough relationship with IB after cooperating on the X-17 thing. That—and your intervention—saved me from the firing squad. When they got wind someone was recruiting vets after Burwell Bay, they came to me with an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Rimes grimaced. In the year since it had happened, Burwell Bay had become the military’s unspoken shame, replacing even the 1932 Bonus Army debacle. Tens of thousands of veterans, many of them decorated heroes, abruptly released from service due to budget cuts, had gathered outside the capital to stage a peaceful protest. Rumors of potential armed action had floated through the corridors of power, and the order went out to aggressively disperse the protestors.
It had been the wrong decision and had cost hundreds of lives. The tension between the president and his military leadership would never be repaired.
“So you were released and Dimon approached you?”
“Not quite. The guy whose face you caved in, he recruited me. He was in Yemen when his orders came down about two years ago. One minute a sergeant with ten years in, the next minute a civilian with a five-thousand-dollar severance. He had to spend a thousand of that just to get home. His son had some sort of medical condition. He’d been relying on the military to help pay for the treatments. Six months after returning, he was bankrupt and his son was dead. Decorated war veteran, multiple wounds suffered in service, and…”
Rimes did his best to stay disconnected from the story. The man had taken up arms against his country, had murdered innocent people. He was a criminal. Stick to the facts. “And Dimon? When did you meet her?”
“About a month ago, the day we learned about the plan to, you know, go after the Harpers. One minute we’re dispersed in camps across the country, the next we’re whisked out to Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas. Dimon was there. I was pretty confident she was our problem, but IB wanted to be sure.
“She briefed us on our target that first night, although we figured it would be a ransom situation. Harper was worth billions. A week ago, we mobilized and hid out in the Chattahoochee National Forest. I checked in at that point, you know, with IB, but there was nothing to act on. A few days later, we formed up and—” Barlowe squeezed his eyes shut and shrugged. “You know the rest. IB had no time to react, really. We used stolen service vehicles to get into the protected section of the city, overwhelmed Harper’s security, and in no time had a hostage crisis turning into executions—and this.” Barlowe glanced back into the emergency room.
Rimes put the timeline together in his head. He’d been brought in shortly before the attack on the Harper estate, and the Commando teams were already en route when he’d arrived at Fort Benning. IB hadn’t been too late because they’d been sitting on their hands, playing politics. Dimon or Perditori or possibly both had simply planned things too well.
Rimes’s attention turned to the parking lot, where two ambulances were pulling in. A car with an Atlanta Police emblem on the side came to a stop close to the entrance. Stockton
climbed from the car and shrugged into a jacket.
“When did it change from hostages-for-money to executions?”
“I don’t think it was ever about money.” Barlowe followed Rimes’s eyes, frowning when Stockton started jogging toward the entry. “I’m not sure who was in on the real plan. Dimon for sure. Maybe a couple others. I think you shot one of them in the hallway. The ones who were close to Dimon. They shifted from following orders to issuing them the moment the cops arrived.”
EMTs wheeled two gurneys into the facility, passing through the automatic glass doors, then rushing past Rimes.
Stockton jogged into the waiting room and came to a stop a foot from Rimes. There was no mistaking the look on Stockton’s wide-eyed, red face.
Rimes held up a hand. “Captain Stockton—”
Stockton moved in close, invading Rimes’s personal space. “Don’t even start, Lieutenant. The entire Harper family was massacred under my watch while I waited for you to show up. Now you’ve got one of them right here?” Stockton jabbed a thumb at Barlowe.
“He’s with IB.” Rimes tried to keep his voice calm.
Stockton lost momentum, blinked, pursed his lips. The color faded from his weathered face ever so slightly. He looked at Barlowe for a long second, reset, then looked back at Rimes. “All right. I’m listening. Why don’t you tell me how I explain to a seventeen year-old girl that her aunt, uncle, and cousins were executed in cold blood by the military while my men sat on their butts? I’ve seen the corpses. Half those folks were Army.”
“Former Army.” Rimes’s skin crawled at his pathetic attempt to wiggle out from under the accusation. “IB knew of nineteen vets recruited for this operation. That’s what tipped them off to it. They were able to get Barlowe here inside.”
“Fat lotta good that did,” Stockton growled.
“We’ve got the person who ran this whole thing heading for ICU, Captain.”
“I want to talk to him.” Stockton’s eyes were slits.
“She’s in no condition to talk, unfortunately. Technically, she’s dead.”
Stockton closed his eyes and wheezed for a moment. “Lieutenant, if you’re just trying to fuck with me—”
“We can still get at her memories.” Calm. “I’ve done this before. Right now, it’s just a matter of stabilizing her and minimizing damage to her brain. The hospital has scrambled the people we need for this. We should have everything—”
Rimes felt the pressure before he heard the explosion, before the heat washed over him, before the glass from the admittance desk partition broke into a million particles that shredded the middle-aged couple and the elderly man.
Barlowe was hurled through a window, disappearing into the parking lot. Stockton barely missed the window, crashing instead into the room’s far corner.
Rimes landed next to Stockton.
The explosion was gone, the roar a momentary thing that left only a dull ringing.
Looking at Stockton’s limp, bloody form, Rimes could imagine how he must look himself. Stockton’s scalp was laid open to the bone over his right ear.
The sprinklers kicked in, spraying a blinding shower.
Blinking away blood and water, Rimes focused on Stockton, hoping to detect a pulse or breathing. Seconds passed before Stockton’s chest rose. Alive.
The blast had come from the emergency room.
There would be no retrieving memories or traveling Dimon’s mind. Either Perditori had seen the attempt in his glimpse of the future, or he had simply assumed Rimes would attempt to use the technology again.
Rimes struggled to right himself, but something was misfiring between his brain and limbs. Movement in the smoke caught his eye. It was the young woman. She was covered in blood. The infant she’d been clinging to now lifelessly dangled from the blood-soaked, shredded blanket. The woman shambled past, oblivious, detached from the now.
It doesn’t matter the enemy, they always turn to the same desperate tactics when they think they’re weaker. Do the genies really see themselves as the weaker power? Does it matter now? They've done it. They've gone too far. No one can ignore the threat anymore. The Joint Chiefs will have to approve the ERF now.
Rimes dwelled on that until he blacked out.
5
24 May, 2167. Lunar orbit.
* * *
A GENTLE TONE SOUNDED. At first it seemed too far away and too soft to matter, but the volume and urgency quickly intensified. Rimes blinked awake as the orbital shuttle began to hum, coming to life. Lights flickered weakly, revealing the converted bay of a cargo hauler. Four rows of twelve seats, two rows against each of the walls, two back-to-back in the center of the bay. The seats were home to the platoon.
They felt more like prison.
Rimes was braced in his forward port seat, just behind the cockpit entry, his headgear attached, its faceplate raised. His neck ached; his legs were numb. A quick glance at his headgear display confirmed they’d been out for more than four hours.
Even desensitized as he was to it by now, Rimes coughed quietly as he inhaled the stale, warm air. Forty-two bodies shoved into a relatively tight space; the atmosphere recycler simply wasn’t built for the load. For that matter, neither was the human body. Rimes’s crotch and armpits were raw, and he could only imagine how bad he smelled.
They need to come up with better environment suits for us. He made mental notes, shoved them aside. He had to focus. This was his first opportunity to provide an ERF proof-of-concept.
Wincing at the pins and needles and protesting joints, he lifted his legs. Overhead lights winked on in the improvised passenger space. He looked around, yawning as the rest of the platoon climbed from the depths of slumber.
They were kids, mostly, nineteen to twenty-four. Sergeant First Class Wallace, the platoon sergeant, was the oldest at thirty-nine. After Wallace, the next oldest was Staff Sergeant Lopresti, the platoon’s senior squad leader, at twenty-seven. Rimes felt absolutely ancient at twenty-eight.
From his seat opposite Rimes, Wallace gave an impatient, questioning look. He feels like he needs to take control, or he’s going to burst. But they’re professionals. They don’t need someone telling them what to do. Wallace is too stuck in his ways, and I’m not going to break him of it. The ERF won't need his type of leadership.
Rimes gave a slow, reluctant nod.
“Come alive, Rangers!” Wallace snarled, twisting left and right in his harness like a caged beast. “Figueroa, give Sharma a shove!”
A tone blared in the cabin. “First Platoon, this is CP-One. We show you online.”
Rimes shook the cobwebs from his head. “This is Lieutenant Rimes. We are online and ready, CP-One. Do you have a status?”
“We do, Lieutenant. One moment, please.”
Rimes waited. There was nothing else to do. At this point, the command post had complete control; he was just in charge of his platoon. Seventy-four hours to reach orbit, a thirty-six-hour training mission, then seventy-four hours back. They were already fourteen hours behind schedule after two aborted landing attempts. The shuttle’s latrines were having problems supporting the demands, and they still had the return flight.
This isn’t going to work.
His platoon was showing strain as well. Fatigue, irritability, lethargy—a soldier’s worst enemies. Spending so many hours held motionless, fighting against the effects of massive acceleration, then zero g…they were ready to collapse.
Rimes already planned to challenge several things—procedures, scheduling, protocols—in his report. His prime complaint would be about the decision to use shuttles lacking gravitic drives.
Cutting corners in space operations was not conducive to success. Even elite troops suffered.
And then there was the remote piloting. Although theoretically feasible, and somewhat proven, actual personnel transport by remote piloting was a bad idea.
And it wasn’t matching the concepts he’d laid out in his presentation to the Joint Chiefs, not by a long shot.
The politics between all the military leaders and branches, it's got to stop. They have to see we don't have the luxury of fighting over this sort of nonsense anymore. The ERF isn't about me or the Army lording it over the Navy; it's about survival, dammit!
“First Platoon, this is CP-One. Second Platoon is reporting ready as well. Opening conference line.”
The line filled with static for a second, then cleared.
“CP-One, this is Lieutenant Rimes, First Platoon.”
“CP-One, this is Lieutenant Durban, Second Platoon.”
“This is CP-One. I have a status from Commander Hardwick. We are ready to proceed with the landing exercise. These landings will run back-to-back to try to make up some of the time lost to the system outage.”
“Say again, CP-One.” Rimes blinked in disbelief. He wished CP-One would run video, but the Broussard’s communications systems were already overtaxed, and Commander Hardwick had made clear early on he wouldn’t introduce unnecessary risk to those systems. Rimes glanced at Wallace long enough to see sour dissatisfaction.
Wallace never hid his feelings about the Navy.
“Commander Hardwick has decided to proceed with the landing exercises. They will run back-to-back to make up for time lost to the system outage. Do you copy, First Platoon?”
“Loud and clear, CP-One.” Rimes struggled to maintain his composure. “I would ask the commander to reconsider—”
Hardwick’s booming voice filled the communications channel. “Lieutenant Rimes, we have reviewed the situation. The Broussard is ready. We have a clear mission here. This is not open to interpretation. You will prepare your platoon for landing in thirty minutes, as discussed in our mission briefing. Once the landing has completed, you will be picked up and returned to orbit, after which you will once again undergo a landing and retrieval process. Is that clear?”