by P. R. Adams
The Sutton didn’t just have extra weapons systems and a larger deck. Snuggled tight at the stern, immediately below decks, was a small compartment accessible by a single set of stairs. The compartment, including a small lab and a slightly larger suite of rooms, was rated for Biosafety Level 4 work.
Rimes paced his prison. The room he was in was three meters deep and two meters across. It was white, sterile—simultaneously empty and cluttered. With a bunk, card table, and two chairs, it offered little open space, but the absence of any personal effects made it feel hollow.
Rimes and Martinez were hot-bunked with Moltke, who was asleep. An adjoining room, accessible through the shared head, held the rest of the team. Rimes and the others faced days of quarantine, assuming they weren’t already dying from whatever agent the genies had used. It would be weeks before the techs would know what had killed the T-Corp agents.
We lost seven men. And for what?
Rimes ran through the inventory: two storage devices, a dozen specimen containers, a spent chemical-weapon canister, several tailor-made weapons retrieved from the genie corpses, and petabytes of data.
Along with the remaining T-Corp agents in the other buildings—dead like the rest—they’d found another portable computer array, busily downloading and analyzing data.
T-Corp had suddenly decided they had to violate a decades-old agreement. The genies—so fast, so deadly—should have fled the moment the Commandos arrived. And whatever had been in the recovered weapons canister somehow fell outside the broad spectrum the Commandos’ kit could detect.
Everything was random data points and inconsistencies, absent of any connecting elements or explanations. Try as he might, Rimes could make no sense of it.
Genies were genetically engineered, lab-grown servants designed to perform specific tasks. These had been Asian, almost certainly LoDu products. Rimes had never heard of genies directly engaging military units before. Outside of attacks on other metacorporate assets, there was simply no record of direct engagement with military forces. And the few who escaped their owners were generally wary of hiring on for anything other than corporate espionage. Of course, the bodies had no identification on them, no way of telling who had hired them and for what purpose.
The CH-121s had been Valkyries, carrying home the fallen.
Lewis, buddy. Body bags, loot. Why? What was in the computer arrays? What was worth the risk? All this death—maybe my own—and I’m going to be a father. If I survive.
As he watched the nurses cautiously catalog the blood samples, Rimes’s thoughts turned to Kleigshoen’s offer. To look at her—the soft hair, the manicured nails, the perfume—it was obvious an Intelligence Bureau agent was treated well.
He’d worked with a few over the years. They’d seemed capable—if cocky and prone to callous disregard for their military counterparts. Most had been burdened with a dangerous sense of entitlement.
Rimes wondered if he could ever become like that. A flash of his baby’s imagined face, of Molly’s warm caress, and he realized he very well might. Family was an obligation he didn’t take lightly.
Martinez returned to the room with a quiet sigh, pulling a cotton ball out of his right elbow crease. “Damned vampires,” he whispered as he settled at the table. He pulled a deck of cards from his thigh pocket and pointed at the table.
Rimes settled into the chair across from Martinez, and the two began a series of half-hearted games. They had access to thousands of entertainment options, but the cards’ tactile sensations and mind-numbing repetition held the greatest appeal. They passed hours without speaking, quietly shuffling, dealing, and playing.
Rimes yawned and checked the time. They’d been aboard the ship a little over fifty-two hours.
Finally, Moltke sat up in the bunk. Martinez stood, offering up his chair. Moltke waved him away and stumbled toward the head with a loud yawn.
Moltke paused at the entry and looked back. “You two up for some poker?”
Martinez shook his head. “I can’t afford it, sir.” He settled into the bunk and flipped the pillow before stretching out. “What about the old gang?”
Moltke glared at Martinez for a moment, then looked to Rimes. “What about you? I don’t feel like giving my money away to Babyface. You up for a little adventure?”
Rimes chuckled and shuffled the cards. “Is Ladell really that good, sir?”
“He knows cards like he knows computers. And don’t be fooled by that innocent face. He’s impossible to read.”
Rimes’s earpiece chirped, and he placed it in his ear. Kleigshoen was requesting a channel.
Rimes accepted.
“Jack?”
Kleigshoen was close. Rimes turned to look into the lab. Two people stood at the wall in hazmat suits.
He walked forward, peering into the faceplates. “Dana?”
A smile spread across the face in the slightly smaller suit. “Good news,” Kleigshoen said. “We made an educated guess on the weapon used to kill the T-Corp team, and just confirmed it. X-17 nerve gas. No contagion. You’d have been killed within seconds had you been exposed to meaningful quantities.”
“No one is showing any signs of exposure, Sergeant Rimes,” said the other person, a doctor who’d been one of the first to interview the returning Commandos. “We should have you all out of here by tomorrow morning. One more round of tests and you’re home free.”
Rimes rubbed his face. He was relieved, but something about the situation left him feeling hollow, too. “How’d they get hold of X-17?”
Kleigshoen looked from the doctor to Rimes. “There was an incident. We don’t know who, but someone managed to steal a shipment. That’s actually why I came to see you. Jack, this is an important case. I’d like to interview you about any details you may have missed during the debrief.”
Her words, although friendly enough, stung.
Even though it ultimately didn’t matter, he’d somehow worked himself into believing she’d come to share the good news because she still cared for him.
It was stupid; he was a happily married man with a child on the way, and his relationship with Kleigshoen had been relatively short and, for Kleigshoen, nothing but a solution for a physical need.
Rimes finally nodded.
“Great. Would now be okay?” Kleigshoen looked at him hopefully, and he nodded again.
She thanked the doctor, who exited the lab.
Rimes looked at the slumbering Martinez, then at Moltke, who wasn’t even pretending to ignore the one-way conversation.
“It was X-17, sir,” Rimes explained. “No contamination. A few more tests, and we should be out of here by morning.”
“X-17? No shit?” Moltke looked surprised for a moment, then turned his attention to the cards. He snorted. “I wasn’t even fucking exposed. Maybe I can salvage my vacation after all.”
We could’ve been completely wiped out, and that’s all he feels? Ice in his veins.
“Roger that, sir,” Rimes said with a smile.
Moltke shook his head. “I guess we know who stole the X-17 now.”
Rimes turned back to Kleigshoen.
He took in a deep breath and tried to focus on the helicopter flight into the Sundarbans … then the trek through the forest … the arrival at the compound …
Kleigshoen played back the debriefing for him, to help jog his memory.
“Okay, Jack,” Kleigshoen said. “I’m looking for anything that might have escaped your attention, anything that might have seemed trivial or obvious during the debriefing. Everything matters at this point: How did your weapons function? How did you feel before entering the compound compared to afterwards? How did your team perform? Did you see anything that was in retrospect out of the ordinary?”
Rimes closed his eyes in concentration. It wasn’t uncommon on critical missions to go through more than one debriefing. After a moment, he looked at Kleigshoen. “Sure. Shoot.”
“Great. Let’s start with the team, then. Did anyone act
odd?”
“Odd?” Rimes rubbed his forehead for a moment, then shook his head. “Not that I can think of. I mean … like what?”
“Maybe they exhibited signs of exposure,” Kleigshoen offered. “Maybe they were a little sluggish. Maybe they were sloppy or had discipline problems?”
Rimes thought back through the operation. Other than Barlowe and Stern, everyone had been at the top of their game. “No,” he said, hesitating, then again with more confidence. “No. We did about as well as could be expected.”
“All right.” Kleigshoen seemed content with the answer. She replayed a segment from the debriefing where Rimes described initial contact with the genies. “You saw movement.”
“Right. I saw one break from cover.”
“How many did you ultimately see?”
“See? Well, Horus picked up six forms. Their suits were pretty advanced. We could barely pick them up with our own optics. Our systems aren’t as advanced as what the Special Security Council has, and it showed. It wasn’t just the suits, though. They moved so fast … I’ve heard of genies being fast. I’ve seen video. This was … it was amazing.”
“I told you,” Kleigshoen said. “There are thousands of them out there. Tens of thousands. And that’s only what the metacorporations have publicly registered. Legally, they’re property, so we can’t be completely sure the metacorporations have revealed everything. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.”
“Like I said, the suits were high-end stuff, as good as anything I’ve ever seen or used,” Rimes said. “I put a three-round burst into the first one, center mass. At that range, it should’ve put him down. I saw the corpse. The rounds got through, but the wounds were almost … superficial. Even so, they would’ve put a normal man down, probably permanently. What the hell can they do to make that possible?”
Kleigshoen thought for a moment. “Toughened skin? Denser bones? Did you see anything odd when you looked at the corpses? What did they look like?”
They’d laid the genies out next to one of the buildings, pulled off their headgear, and exposed their wounds for the video record. “Young, maybe mid-twenties. My age, maybe a little older. Asian, mostly—the eye shape—”
“Epicanthic fold?”
Rimes nodded. “Right. And straight, dark hair. Male. About my height, but leaner. You couldn’t tell they had less mass by the force of their attacks. There was … the eyes were different. The shape was slightly off. And the color was different. There was something strange about the iris.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Rimes closed his eyes. “The video should have caught it. But maybe not, in that lighting. Something about the placement and the size. There was … an animal-like appearance about them. Does that make any sense?”
“You mean they glowed when the light hit them?”
Rimes half-shook his head. “Not quite, but something like that.”
“We’ve got their DNA. Our scientists are going to be tearing this data apart for months. Go on.”
“That’s about it, really. The kit was the sort of thing you’d find only with an elite unit. Modular weapons, unique materials. Specialized. Their physical capabilities—strength, speed, resiliency—were off the charts. Whatever tailoring they did, it started with Asian DNA. I’m confident they were LoDu.”
“What are the odds they made off with some of the data?”
Rimes thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. The computer arrays were still downloading and decrypting the data when we found them. They could have done a parallel download and left with incomplete data, but Barlowe said this sort of stuff is usually stored so that you have to have all the files to decompress and decrypt fully. Barlowe did all he could with the systems. They took some damage, and there’s some sort of complex encryption algorithm involved. Really, you should talk to him about the computers. He’s pretty amazing. Plus … we didn’t see any genies leaving as we approached the facility. No. I don’t see how they could’ve gotten the data out.”
“You didn’t see any once you were in the facility, either,” Kleigshoen reminded him. “Not until it was almost too late.”
Rimes nodded. Even Horus had missed the genies until Moltke had sent it in closer. “Okay, sure. It’s possible, although I still question the value of what they could have gotten away with. We can’t know. If they can make some that are as smart as those were tough, though …”
Kleigshoen watched him for a moment. “You killed three of them, Jack.”
“No, a team of eighteen Commandos killed six of them, and we suffered a nearly forty-percent fatality rate in the process.”
Just like Singapore.
Rimes shook his head as Wolford’s last seconds played out in his mind. “It could’ve been much worse. They could’ve succeeded with their ambush. One or two fewer mistakes, a break that had gone their way, and they would’ve gotten us all. I don’t think they were very experienced. Not against military.”
She pressed a gloved hand against the wall. “I’m sorry about your friends. Jack … Don’t forget my offer. It’s too dangerous out there.”
Rimes nodded.
He wondered what Molly would think—he’d have to share at least a little of what he’d been through with her.
He wasn’t looking forward to it.
10
25 February 2164. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
* * *
Rimes woke with a start. His neck ached, and his head throbbed where he’d just smacked into the bus window. The old man beside him cursed as he tried to find a comfortable spot. The old man’s wife, looking weaker than when they’d boarded in Los Angeles, tried to scoot back from the crowded aisle. Filthy young men swayed unsteadily in the aisle, shouting curses to no one in particular.
With a glance out the grease-smudged window, Rimes realized they were finally approaching the outskirts of Oklahoma City.
The highway had fallen into even greater disrepair—spiderweb cracks, craters, washed-away shoulders—since his last trip home, no doubt victim to more violent storms.
And Oklahoma City’s broken skyline served as painful testimony to the lack of will and wherewithal for any kind of intervention.
He blinked the sleep away and yawned, immediately regretting taking in the bus’s foul air through his scented surgical mask. Even living in the field and going days without a shower couldn’t match the rank odor permeating everything around him: unwashed bodies, clothes long overdue for disposal, grease- and dirt-covered travel bags, and patches of exposed cushion that absorbed each passenger’s scent, mingling it with its predecessor’s until it produced a nauseating stench. The end result unsettled him more than the sounds of combat ever could.
He recalled traveling in his youth with Cleo, his father. They’d traveled occasionally by car, but mostly by bus on private seats, with blankets purchased to protect their clothing. Rimes had heard that travel even as recently as thirty years ago hadn’t been so bad. More people had flown, and private or shared vehicle ownership had been common.
But the city had been deep into its death throes, even in his earliest memories. Fires raged for days at a time with no one to fight them, roads cracked and buckled with no one to repair them, and gangs terrorized anyone foolish enough to enter their territories.
Rimes had seen it all—the crime, the violence, the utter despair born of economic hopelessness and helplessness—without even realizing what it was, riding on his father’s lap in a battered HuCorp mini-sedan.
His father had been an American football star and had been relatively well-off—but that life had been fleeting. His political career, almost as short as his football career, had been built on the idea that the shattered American landscape and institutions could be restored. Two stints in Congress had helped recoup some of his squandered wealth, but corruption trials had siphoned even more off than had been regained, leaving them a very modest life and, eventually, leading to a broken home.
Another pothole, more swaying and cursing. The old man reached across his wife and pushed away a young man who’d lost his grip on the ceiling rails.
The young man was of southern Indian descent, dressed in tattered paper pants and a shirt haphazardly patched together from at least three others. An ugly scar angled across his forehead and nose. Something about the man troubled Rimes, and he kept “Scarface” in his peripheral vision the rest of the way to the bus station.
The bus came to a stop at the rear of the station, the autodriver shutting down with a staticky announcement of their arrival. Folks exited in a ragged, sluggish line, their pace set as much by malnutrition as stiffness and fatigue. Scarface disappeared in the bustle, but Rimes felt certain he’d gone into the terminal.
Rimes exited last. He gave a final scan around to be sure he wasn’t being watched. After putting the bus between him and the other passengers, he set his earpiece into his ear.
“Molly Rimes,” he muttered.
A moment later, Molly’s voice came over the line. “Hello?”
“Molly, it’s me. We just reached Oklahoma City.”
Rimes looked across the street to an empty lot that had once held a row of houses. Children played football, shouting and running over the packed dirt. Rimes closed his eyes for a moment to remember his father’s stories of American football, before it had collapsed in the same economic maelstrom that had obliterated so much else of the country.
Americans used to call the sport the kids were playing “soccer,” not “football.” Now, none of them knew any better. The US was just another poverty-stricken land that embraced the simpler and cheaper sport.
“I’ll be about forty minutes,” Molly said, excitement in her voice. “Oh, Jack …”
Rimes smiled, imagining his son leaping and kicking amongst the grimy kids running through the packed-dirt lot. “I’ll see you when you get here, Baby.”
With one fluid motion, he signed off and put his earpiece away.
After another glance to ensure he wasn’t being watched, he stepped from behind the bus, adjusting his travel pack on his shoulder. He walked casually toward the terminal, stepping through the entry and locating the bathroom.