by Kyle Mills
“Yes sir!”
They all actually managed to say it at the same time. Things were looking up.
“Okay. First things first. I want you to take your Merge unit and throw it in the mud.”
No one moved.
“Is there a problem?”
Grayson was first to speak up. “We were told that these are incredibly expensive prototypes and that they were to come back without so much as a scratch.”
“Well, those orders have been revised. Now get them into the mud. And stomp on them until I tell you to stop.”
The four non-combat soldiers obeyed, but as delicately as possible. Grayson, understanding the point of the exercise, threw himself into the air and slammed his boot down on his unit so hard it completely disappeared into the soft ground.
Smith turned and contemplated their objective, looking for a sign of the enemy while the splashing and stomping went on behind him. It was really just a test of manufacturing consistency, since he’d already performed a much more stringent evaluation of his own unit.
“Okay,” he said, putting on an armband that designated him as an observer. “Saddle up.”
* * *
Corporal Grayson had taken de facto command of the group and was doing a surprisingly good job of adjusting to the reality of his team’s dismal abilities. He kept them on easier terrain and spread out at five-meter intervals.
There was still more than a little bit of tripping, heavy breathing, and panicked drops to the ground, but they were managing to move in the general direction of their objective and no one had yet twisted an ankle or stroked out. A minor miracle as far as Smith was concerned.
He hung back a bit, focusing on a semi-transparent overlay of the battlefield in the right upper corner of his vision. His people were shown as dots in varying shades of green based on their military records — Grayson’s was predictably dark and rich, conveying his combat experience and other achievements. The others were significantly lighter, with his skinny programmer semi-translucent.
More interesting, though were the red dots that he was privy to as the leader of this exercise — a Delta ambush that his team was unwittingly strolling into. Smith switched to vision enhancement mode and let the computer automatically calculate the optimal mix of filters as he searched the trees ahead. The thermal imaging blinded him for a moment, confused by the rain, but it immediately faded and left him with primarily the chlorophyll overlay. Combined with outline enhancement and light amplification of the shadows, it allowed him to immediately spot the shape of an arm sticking out from beneath a fallen tree.
But he wasn’t the only one.
“Do you see that?” Stacy said quietly over her tooth mike. “What is it? One o’clock.”
Incredible. Despite being about as stealthy as a herd of buffalo, they had identified a highly trained, dug-in enemy before they themselves had been spotted.
“Everyone stop and get down,” Grayson said. “Nice job, Lieutenant. That’s an arm. And we’re gonna blow it off. But first we’re gonna get a little closer. Everybody move forward real quiet. This isn’t a race. There’s no such thing as too slow. We’re looking for additional targets.”
They actually did a good job of staying out of sight, though it turned out there probably was such thing as too slow. At the pace they set, they’d overrun the Delta position sometime in January.
“I’ve got another one,” Kent said, his voice sounding shockingly clear over the Merge link. “About eleven o’clock. Next to a small rise.”
“I can’t see him from here,” Grayson responded. “Are you certain?”
“One hundred percent.”
Smith pulled up a small window that displayed what the man was seeing. Sure enough, it was another of the Delta team, so smeared with mud that he himself might have walked right past him if he’d only had his naked eye to work with.
“Okay. We’re up against a five-man team and we have two of the sons of bitches dead to rights. If we get any closer, we’re going to risk being spotted and then all hell is going to break loose. I say we take our shot now. Agreed?”
When everyone came back affirmative, Smith leaned out around the tree he’d taken refuge behind. This was something he had to see.
“Okay, I have the guy at one o’clock—”
“Negative,” Smith interjected. “I already know you can hit him, Corporal. Let someone else take the shot.”
“Affirmative. Lieutenant. You spotted him, he’s all yours.”
“But…But I…”
“Relax, Stacy,” Smith said. “Just a game, remember.”
“Yeah, Lieutenant,” Grayson said. “You’ve got this. Just line the Merge’s crosshairs up and tell me when you’re ready. Major Kent. I take it you’ve got a line?”
“My crosshairs are dead center and I’m ready to go.”
“Okay, everybody else pull back nice and easy. We’re going to go about twenty meters and set up to cover our people’s retreat. In the meantime, get a bead on that guy, Lieutenant.”
To the degree that it was possible from his position, Smith watched Grayson and two of his team members slither back and find cover that allowed them a clear view of the soldiers left behind.
“You ready Lieutenant?”
“The crosshairs are on his arm. I can’t see any more of him.”
“That’s okay. An M16 round to the arm will ruin anyone’s day. Fire on three. One…Two…Three.”
Both guns flashed and speakers on the sides sounded with the crack of the shot.
And then, predictably, it all hit the fan.
The Delta team, figuring they could terrify the less experienced force, broke cover and charged forward, firing at the two people trying to retreat back to their unit. Smith’s software registered a very near miss on his lawyer and he watched Delta’s impressive speed and accuracy pulsating bright red as they approached.
Under normal circumstances, it was a sensible strategy. These were not normal circumstances, though.
Carrie and Duane, the computer tech, were shooting wildly, ignoring their targeting system and missing by wide margins. Grayson, however, wasn’t so easily rattled. He nailed the lead attacker dead center and was lining up on another when the Delta team recognized that things weren’t going their way, dropped, and disappeared behind uneven ground.
When Smith caught up with his team of misfits again, they were huddled against the broad trunk of a tree. All but Grayson were gulping wildly at the air and Smith thought Stacy might actually be in respiratory distress until she grinned and gave him the thumbs-up.
“Okay, now!” Smith said. “So what do you think? Shooting Delta guys is kind of fun, isn’t it?”
Based on their expressions, they thought it was.
“So you want to hear the score? Major, you had a kill, congratulations. Lieutenant, unfortunately, you just got a graze, so no appreciable damage.”
“Damn!” she said, the disappointment heavy in her voice.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Lieutenant. That was a low-percentage shot for anyone. And you made your point getting that close.”
“What about me, sir?” Grayson asked.
“Dead center of mass.”
He pumped a fist in the air.
“So, by my calculations, your first engagement with Delta left your team fully intact, while you scored two kills and a graze. I’d call that a pretty good start to the day.”
“So what now?” Duane said. “The rest of those guys aren’t going to make the same mistake again.”
Grayson nodded. “I think we should sweep northeast, so we can attack the mountain on the least steep side. With those kinds of losses, Delta’s going to pull back to a defensive position, and frankly they’re going to overestimate us. We can use that.”
Based on an overhead image of the battlefield that only Smith could see, Grayson was exactly right. Delta was setting up to keep an extremely professional opponent from climbing the hill, focusing on the steeper southern
and western slopes. The east slope had a far less practical entry point but it was probably the only one this group would be able to get up.
The rain started to recede and Smith followed as they moved out again. They passed right by the two “dead” Delta soldiers and he would have loved to see the look on their faces, but the thermal overlay had strengthened to the point that subtlety of expression was obscured.
Grayson had put Stacy, the heavier of the two women, on point. She looked exhausted and he’d obviously decided to sacrifice her if need be. Probably not realistic in real combat but one of those easy calls to make in a training exercise.
“Wait,” Smith heard Stacy say quietly over his Merge. “Corporal. Come up here and look at this, please.”
Smith stayed where he was, bringing up a window that displayed her unit’s input. She was looking at the ground between two trees and, more specifically, a thin blue line running between them.
“Sneaky bastards,” he heard Grayson say. “Everybody step over the trip wire between the rocks. Don’t worry, you can’t miss it.”
Amazing. The tiny wire should have been virtually invisible, but instead there might as well have been a sign with an arrow and “booby trap” written in foot-high letters.
They continued on, finally stopping just before they reached a broad riverbed with only a few inches of water left. It would be just over twenty-five meters of open ground to the trees on the other side.
“Can we get around it?” Duane asked.
Grayson’s eyes went distant and flicked around as he pulled up a satellite image of the area and examined it in the air in front of him. “Nope. We have to cross it to get to the base of the hill and there isn’t anywhere that’s any narrower.”
“So what do we do?” the lawyer said.
“We run for it,” Grayson said, moving to the edge of cover and scanning the landscape for any sign of the enemy. “You first, Major. Fast as you can.”
That turned out not to be all that fast, but he gave it his all and made it to the other side safe. Grayson went with Carrie next, having her start fifty meters downstream to keep their crossing points random. She looked like she was going to make it, when a distant shot sounded.
It was a hit and Smith winced as her Merge reduced her vision and balance by seventy percent, pitching her against the rocks and sending her rolling into what was left of the river. He’d need to talk to someone about attenuating that feature when people were running or in dangerous terrain.
“Stay down!” Grayson shouted, forgetting that his voice was being projected directly into her mind. Not that it mattered. The software would reduce the volume to optimal.
Despite his warning, she panicked and tried to get up. Smith could have shut down her unit and called it a kill, but decided to instead watch her struggle to her knees and then fall over again. After one more halfhearted try, she just lay there panting.
“Sir?” Grayson said and Smith frowned, trying to decide how much he wanted to say. “Seventy percent damage. With attention, she might survive.”
“Shit,” the Ranger said under his breath. “We need to deal with this damn sniper. We’re in the low ground, though, and I can’t pick him out.” He dropped his pack. “I’m going to go up a tree.”
“Hold on,” Duane said, showing a flash of confidence for the first time that day. “I can do that. When I was a kid, we had these huge cherry trees in our yard. I used to climb them all the time.”
Grayson hesitated for a moment but then gave a short nod. “And don’t come down until you find that shooter.”
Smith was a little alarmed when the kid ran to the tallest tree near them and started into the branches. No one was supposed to get hurt and he already had a woman trapped on the riverbank who looked a little worse for the wear. What he didn’t need was this kid falling out of a tree and breaking his neck.
So he jogged over and started up through the branches in pursuit. Duane couldn’t have weighed much more than a buck forty. If the wheels fell off, Smith figured he might actually be able to catch him.
20
Southern New Mexico
USA
Craig Bailer glided along the empty rural highway, keeping the rented car’s speed steady. Inasmuch as dashboard-mounted GPS units had made maps seem obsolete, the Merge was an even more fundamental leap forward. Even with the limitations of the bare-bones apps included with the first-generation model, the act of driving felt transformed. The road ahead glowed yellow, a color he’d initially opposed because of the obvious Wizard of Oz parallel. He’d been overruled by Javier de Galdiano’s tech team, though, due to some technical minutiae about how the brain processed color. And once again, de Galdiano had been right.
More important than the interface, though, was the fact that the images transmitted to his mind were being constantly analyzed and monitored — for children and animals at the edges of the road, for unusual actions or the blind spots of surrounding drivers, as well as constant comparisons to actual and posted speeds. Finally, the sleep function, which worked both ways, subtly manipulated his brain patterns to keep him alert.
It was just a taste of what was to come, though. By next year, Mercedes and a number of other car manufacturers would include compatible cameras with various visual enhancements, as well as links to cruise control, braking, and steering during emergency situations.
That is, if Christian Dresner didn’t destroy the company first.
“Call David Tresco,” he said aloud in the empty car. Unfortunately, it was still too lengthy a command for the Merge to deal with mentally.
“Cell, home, or office?” came the response in his head.
“Cell.”
There were no visual cues at all — most apps and icons were deactivated when the user was behind the wheel — but he could hear the quiet sound of dialing followed by ringing at the other end.
“Where are you?” Tresco said, not bothering to hide his irritation at what he had called “all this clandestine bullshit.” It was a judgment that he would be revising very soon.
The yellow path ahead broke right into a solitary gas station.
“I’m about to pull in.”
Bailer eased up to the man’s SUV, stopping only long enough for him to jump in before accelerating again.
“Okay. I’m here. What’s the hell is all this about?”
Tresco was a former oil industry CEO and now was one of Dresner Industries’ most influential board members. He was not, however, an easy man to deal with.
“We have some problems that I want to talk to you about.”
“I just read through your reports about the rollout. It sounds like we’re exceeding projections in every category. And the press has been more positive than any one of us could have hoped — even about the implants. What problems could possibly be important enough to drag me to a gas station in the middle of nowhere on Saturday? My goddamn grandkids are in town.”
“The development of the Merge was a lot more expensive and difficult than you’re aware of,” Bailer said simply.
He didn’t take his eyes from the road, but the fact that there was no immediate response suggested that his statement had been enough to put grandchildren out of Tresco’s mind. He was not a man accustomed to not having all the facts.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying to me, Craig.”
“We incurred expenses and debt that’ve been moved to subsidiaries and partnerships all over the globe.”
Tresco didn’t respond immediately. When he did, he spoke cautiously. “How much debt?”
“Enough to bankrupt the company even if we sell double our projected volume. If we’re clever, we might be able to meet our obligations next month. But the month after that, there’s no way in hell.”
“Why did you keep this from me?” Tresco said, caution turning to fear. “I didn’t know anything about it.”
“I doubt anyone will believe that.”
“Was that a threat, Craig? Are you threa
tening me?”
Of course, that was exactly what he was doing. But there was no reason to be explicit about it. Tresco was an extremely wealthy man with a carefully crafted and impeccable reputation. He would do whatever was necessary to protect the status he’d spent a lifetime building.
Bailer handed him a tablet and turned onto an even more desolate road that led into the rugged Organ Mountains. Crosswinds buffeted the car, but couldn’t be blamed for Tresco’s increasingly pale complexion as he scrolled through the graphs and charts.
“How…How did this happen? How could you let this happen?”
“I was aware of some of it, but I only recognized the extent about a year ago.”
“But Christian—”
“Christian can’t be trusted anymore. There was a time when he’d listen to financial realities, but as he’s gotten older he’s become more and more isolated. He lives in his own world now. A world he believes he can save. And it’s causing him to make stupid decisions like focusing on a search system that makes judgments about people, and software that’s specific to the financial industry and politicians. It’s also caused him to limit our military sales to only a small percentage of soldiers worldwide.”
Tresco shut down the tablet and stared out at the dead, rocky hills speeding by. His hand shook visibly as he wiped the sweat from around his mouth.
“We need to move Dresner out, David.”
Tresco let out a bitter laugh. “Do you have any idea what that’ll do to our stock price?”
“We’ll do it quietly. Keep him in place as a figurehead.”
“I’m finding it very hard to believe he’s going to just give up his position at a company he spent his life building. And how does that help our cash flow? No. We’re going to have to look for a partner.”
“We can’t sell off a significant interest in the company, David.”
“Why not?”
“There are things that would come to light…” His voice faded for a moment. “Things that need to stay in the dark.”
“The offshore debt?”
“It’s not the financial issues, David.”