Vendetta Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

  The presence of a general officer this early in the exercise stage was unusual. We’d heard reports that the Greys had been seen moving between the far-off stars at the edge of the Outer Rim. Styrahi forces engaged with the mysterious enemy several times during attacks on newly established colonial worlds. Rumor was that the Greys had defeated the Styrahi in hours on more than one occasion. The Styrahi were gaining ground, though. Planet-wide fights were becoming common. I could hear the two senior pilots next to me talking softly.

  The older one with gray hair in his mustache said, “They’re bringing in the heavies, from what I hear. Going to teach the TDF that their tactics don’t work once and for all.”

  His counterpart laughed. “The TDF can’t fight their way out of a paper bag. When the Greys come, it will be Fleet and the Styrahi holding them off. The barbies know how to win a ground war, buddy.”

  I’d only met two Styrahi in the past six months, both in passing at Armstrong Spaceport when we lifted to Mars. The two gorgeous pilots even kept our instructors’ mouths shut. As warriors of all sorts, they were far superior to humans in every respect. Of course, that gave my peers an inferiority complex, and they derisively called the Styrahi “barbies.” Most of them were taller than two meters, and they were incredibly beautiful in an almost human way. Their cheekbones were very prominent, and their ears had a longer, more tapered shape but weren’t pointed. They had six toes and twice as many chromosomal pairs as a human, but in most ways, they were very similar to us.

  The Styrahi flag officer—I couldn’t remember what their generals were called—stopped at a booth along the wall. Admiral LeConté stood and kissed her palms in the traditional Styrahi way before he gestured for her to sit down. Conversations slowly picked up across the room. I hadn’t seen the commandant before that moment, which was probably for the best. We briefly made eye contact, and he nodded slightly. A half-full glass of bourbon rested on the table behind him.

  I really do have a friend here. If I’m lucky, he and General Crawley can keep Bussot off my ass for a few more weeks. Who is the Styrahi, Lily?

  <>

  Not necessary. For the last week, I’d watched the Styrahi forces hammer the TDF units by using Grey tactics in simulated movement-to-contact scenarios. In a few days, everything would move outside onto the Martian terrain for a few drills before the actual exercise started. Combined arms exercises, especially rehearsals for them, were supposed to work out the kinks in the offensive or defensive plan. So far, the TDF had proven only their massive amount of incompetence, and there was only so much I could do from the air. With the Styrahi playing as the Greys, it would be a slaughter.

  Around the bar, conversations restarted, but the presence of the general officers kept the crowd from getting raucous. More than a few of the junior officers, including my classmates, took the opportunity to leave as soon as they’d finished their drinks. Bussot and Peck were sitting side by side and acting very civil. I did suppose that her straddling him in public would have been against regulations, but her change of position was most likely to save whatever reputation she kept with the commandant. She and Peck made their way from the bar with a discreet, but clearly noticeable, gap between their departures.

  Later, through my room’s walls came the sounds of two grown adults mating like rabbits in heat, though only one of them seemed to be enjoying it. Bussot’s unmistakable voice both urging and commanding Peck made me laugh. I snuck closer to the door to our shared bathroom and pulled it shut without a sound.

  <>

  You’re joking. Is she still going at it with Peck?

  <>

  How much weirder can this night get?

  <>

  I shook my head and checked the clock. For a split second, I wondered if the Class Six store was still open. A drink sounded really good, but I’d need every ounce of my wits to fight Bussot one-on-one in an actual aircraft. That she’d managed to wrangle two aircraft for a weekend sortie wasn’t surprising. Nor was it a surprise that she was on my ass, again, when it came to dogfighting. A pregraduation check flight was almost as critical as a final examination. If she failed me, I had only one chance left to graduate. I’d need to pass the final check ride, with her undoubtedly as my instructor, or sleep with her. The latter wasn’t going to happen. I knew she was trying to get in my head. Trouble was that she had succeeded. Dammit.

  <>

  The skin on the back of my neck rippled, and I could feel the hair standing on end. Something was lingering just outside of my subconscious—something important, to be sure—but I could not pull it out and unpack it.

  I lay down to sleep, thinking about how many ways Bussot could fix a one-on-one fight, and I fell asleep before I got through them all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sun rose above the Great Australian Bight and filled the Roarks’ home with light. Berkeley glanced away from her tracking software. The explosion of orange and violet along the horizon made her stop and stare. A quick check of her neurals confirmed that she’d been tilting at windmills for more than five hours with no measurable degree of success. She stood up from her desk and padded lightly to the kitchen. The coffee was strong and hot, and she added a tiny bit of sugar and milk before watching the sunrise. From the patio at the rear of the house, the Bight spread in both directions. She could see down the hill to Allan’s. The lights in his little kitchen were on, and she decided to take him breakfast after telling General Crawley that she’d failed.

  Failure was too strong a word, she thought, but the taste of the word was the same. There’d been no video, no audio, no telemetry, and no Internet connection from the Hokkaido Shrine for a very long time. When it returned, there was nothing amiss except that the girl and the agents were missing. There was a curious note that the local Internet connections along the Hokkaido rail lines had returned to normal, and Berkeley had followed that rabbit hole for another hour before it, too, ended without resolution.

  Along the rail lines, only Internet and video connections were terminated for more than six thousand subscribers. The blackout rolled along from the Hokkaido Shrine station to the spaceport at Chitose. Did the girl run? Did the agents drag her to the spaceport and fly to Paris?

  The Paris flight had a less-than-full manifest and no late bookings. Footage from the waiting area and gate were negative for the girl. Widening her search, Berkeley found a last-minute booking for a New York-bound exocraft under the name of Ayumi Miysaki. The video, however, gave her no clues. With the current Japanese policy denying the use of facial-recognition software, many Japanese citizens had never been scanned. Their faces were essentially the empty data sets of a null profile.

  Wasn’t the girl scanned before she left Sydney? Even if she had been, Crawley would not have released that information widely. Anything else would be up to the protocol.

  Hell. Berkeley snorted. If the protocol comes back online at all. Berkeley used her neural connection to maintain an open search for additional video from the shrine as well as monitor the suborbital flight from Chitose to New York that would land in ninety minutes. There was a data connection to the aircraft, and she’d been able to scan and observe the onboard information for seat 2A, but there had been nothing. The girl’s seat hadn’t even reclined a degree. If her onboard entertainment system came on, Berkeley would be able to use the retinal cameras to take a picture and upload a facial-recognition profile.

  Berkeley sipped her coffee a
nd set out another cup. General Crawley would arrive soon so they could talk without data connections and security procedures. His request wasn’t that awkward. Like Kieran and her, Crawley had taken to the small seaside town and considered it a second home.

  Berkeley took another sip and a long, slow breath. In three months, she’d be on Mars with Kieran and getting ready to leave the solar system. With the idyllic life of European academia behind her, she was content with the situation and their destination. They’d be on the Outer Rim within a year, Kieran commanding the farthest outpost of TDF forces in the galaxy and Berkeley working with the families of his troops. Forward-deployed units tended to work best when fully supported so all they had to focus on was fighting. Bringing along family members helped. Kieran called her a camp follower, but he knew she would want to be there. She was not prepared to play the lady in waiting, and Crawley’s plan made sense. Her skills could be as useful there as they were on the planet, and no one would be looking over her shoulder. They had no idea what they might find on the far reaches of the Outer Rim. If the Greys returned, they would be the first line of defense.

  At precisely 0630, an autocar slid quietly to a stop in front of the house. General Crawley, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, strode up the walkway. Berkeley met him at the stoop.

  “Long time, no see,” she said. Her neural blinked that it had been almost three months since their last encounter. The rest of his information was carefully hidden, by her own programming. If she needed it, there was always another way to find it. “I don’t have much.”

  Crawley closed the distance, and the two shared a warm embrace. “It’s good to see you, Berkeley. Nice day for a shit storm.”

  “What do you mean?” Berkeley studied at his face. Clearly more things were at play than just the missing protocol and the future of the sleeper program. Her heart skipped a little before she calmed herself. He wasn’t here about Kieran. Yet.

  Crawley gestured that they should go inside. Behind the closed door, he stopped and looked around the small, neat house. “Love the house.”

  Berkeley smiled. “Thank you.” She followed him into the kitchen and heard him sigh.

  “This day gets worse and worse.” Crawley stepped around the kitchen counter and poured a mug of coffee, black, and sipped. “The morning report to the Terran Council is due in about five hours, but I’m not expecting them to say anything.”

  “You want me to get you a transcript of the meeting?”

  “Not necessary.” More than likely, Crawley had someone on the inside of the council itself. Maybe two or more. “I doubt this meeting will provide much data to the council. Too early.”

  There was more to it. Crawley watched her for a long moment with narrowed eyes. After three years of working together, she knew when he was testing her.

  “She got away?”

  “Worse,” Crawley said.

  “What’s worse than a protocol getting away?” A rogue protocol on a nonintegrated sleeper would eventually stop attempting to integrate the subject through suggestion and motivation. The sleeper would start having visions and would appear to others as having a form of dementia. Illness or not, the spillage of classified information about sleepers and the Terran Defense Force was a grave matter.

  Crawley took another sip of coffee and set the mug on the counter. Leaning forward, he shook his head. “She killed two agents. Hand-to-hand with the tantō, the short Japanese dagger we think she intended to perform seppuku with.”

  “Killed?” Berkeley gasped. The memory of Kieran disarming and killing three attackers along the Continental Divide more than a year before flashed across her mind. Something feral had taken him over, and they both were alive because of it. “Her file said there was nothing to worry about.”

  Crawley nodded. “Everything in the data we had said she was almost pacified in her response to all stimuli. We’re reasonably sure she has her name and some family history, but her service-connected memories have been repressed. Consciously repressed.”

  “She wanted a life without violence. That’s understandable.”

  “That’s not what we need.”

  Berkeley shook her head. “What did you tell me when I started working for you? That if thirty percent of the subjects integrated and did not want to fight, you would not be surprised.”

  “Veterans understand. Most of them would do it all again, but they know what the stakes are the second time around.” Crawley shook his head. “When you’re young, you don’t think about dying, Berkeley. You’re excited to show what you’ve learned. Part of you wants combat so bad you can taste it. Being in combat is something different entirely. I’m surprised about this one, more than I was with Kieran. He integrated and realized his vocation as a soldier before he came up with anything else. This girl got her name and managed to force most of the other stuff down. I can’t imagine what the suppression is doing to her, though.”

  “She’s not Kieran.”

  Crawley snorted. “We had a pretty good idea of what we’d get with him. And the others.”

  Berkeley tilted her head. Realization slapped her in the face. He’d known who Kieran was because of his ancestor’s journal. He’d also known where Kieran was buried. Crawley had wanted Kieran to find his burial plot. She gasped in shock. “You know who they are, don’t you? All of the subsequent subjects. They all are buried at Mountain Home, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, Berkeley. I’ve known all along. It’s why we went after the cemetery in the first place.” Crawley squinted at her with one side of his mouth screwed up, as if considering what he could tell her. “The original DNA repository for the United States of America was kept at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Detrick survived the People’s War and was only slightly irradiated. There were three point seven million samples present in the vaults when the Mountain Men went. About two hundred thousand were not irradiated significantly. Two hundred of those were buried at Mountain Home, the last modern military cemetery we could save. So yes, we’ve known all along who we’re trying to bring back, Berkeley.”

  The Styrahi had revealed that memory and instinctual behaviors could be stored in DNA, and they’d shown humanity how to recover it. The 180,000 samples from the vault had some other purpose. Berkeley sucked in a breath. “How many subjects in this program are from Mountain Home?”

  “Four.” Crawley gazed out the wide kitchen windows for a moment. “All of them have solid DNA profiles, but two of them aren’t from the generation we need.”

  Kieran and this other subject are about the same age. “Why them, General?”

  “We wanted twenty-first-century clones because we can’t take twenty-third-century subjects and ‘train’ them a little differently like the council wants. There’s too much passivity there. If we did use them, the Terran Defense Force would be full of docile solders, Berkeley—the kind who would take an order literally and carry it out to the letter, regardless of losses or death. We couldn’t take that chance.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Livermore. That’s all you get. You don’t need to know.”

  “Don’t need to know? My husband, your first damned subject, is on Mars, training to lead people to war. If the Terran Council finds out he’s alive, they’ll come after us all.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” Crawley’s tone told her that he wasn’t convinced of what he was saying. “This is much bigger than just Kieran and this other subject. Much bigger.”

  I know what I have to do now. Berkeley tried to shake the errant thought away, but the reality of it was true and poignant. “I need the transmission logs from when the subject’s protocol went down.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “We have to protect Kieran.” Berkeley raised her hands. “I know we have a subject out on walkabout—I get that. Kieran is out there. We have to ensure that the council can’t find him. If I have the logs, I can
verify the frequency profiles and all connections to the missing subject’s protocol and update Lily to function differently to keep Kieran safe. He’ll never know what changes I make, unless I tell him.”

  Crawley sighed. “You think there’s a connection between him and this subject going offline?”

  “No. At least, not yet. But if she went offline by someone else’s doing, it could happen to Kieran. He has a protocol onboard.”

  “You said yourself it was the best protocol ever produced.”

  Berkeley nodded and leaned against the kitchen cabinets. “Lily is the best protocol I’ve ever programmed. She can hold her own against virtually anything and is a perfect complement to Kieran.”

  “We’ll know if something comes after Kieran, then?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “He really hates Mars?” Crawley smiled.

  “Yeah. His chief instructor keeps trying to bed him. It’s fairly pathetic.” Berkeley laughed. “He’s doing fine with flight school.”

  Crawley took a long sip of coffee. “Any further progression?”

  While Kieran had achieved his identity integration, there were still things developing in his mind. “He’s been making a lot of notes about air and ground-force interaction. The whole TDF and Fleet split has him frustrated.”

  “I’ve been through the diary a million times. There was something about the interaction of air and ground forces that irked him in Afghanistan, but I can’t figure out what. There’s not a lot of solid tactical analysis from that time that hasn’t been purged of common sense.”