I bring up my Lasher, ready to defend myself as Jaynie bounds to a stop on the landing below me. The black shield of her visor looks up at me, but she keeps the muzzle of her HITR trained on the floor. She says off-com, “I don’t want to play this game, Shelley. Let’s go outside before one of us gets hurt.”
I go off-com too. “Goddamn it, Jaynie! Is Fadul right? Are you working for Abajian? Because Logan is dying out there and fucking Abajian ordered that!”
I’m talking fast, holding down the trigger on my words, determined to have it out. Last chance.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Jaynie says. “But don’t
make it worse. I’ve got orders to protect the vault, and if you can’t rein in Fadul—”
“Why are you here, Jaynie? What did Abajian promise you? Did he promise you he’d get control of the Red?”
“Isn’t that what the L-AIs are for? But it wasn’t Abajian. This is Monteiro’s operation. She wanted you on this mission because she wanted you to bring the Red. Let it find Nashira for us. You did that. Now you need to step aside.”
Yeah, I thought it might be that way. And Monteiro got all the data from the lab too. I have to admit, it was a master play. “What did you get out of the deal?” I ask again.
“She said if I recruit you for this mission, she lifts the restrictions on the Mars project.”
Mars again?
“
Fuck
Mars! Why are you so goddamned eager to leave us, anyway?”
“You got no right to ask me that.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I just want it. I want to be the first. Come from nowhere. Claim a new world. That so hard to understand?”
“There’s no coming back from it, Jaynie. Never.”
“There’s no coming back from anything, Shelley. That’s how life is. We got only one way to go.”
That’s not an answer—at least, it’s not the one I want to hear. But it’s all I’m going to get in these seconds given to us, borrowed time.
I lower the muzzle of my weapon and trot down the stairs. “All right. Let’s go. But you need to help me with Fadul. I don’t want her hurt, but she’s operating.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s been given the mission that was meant for me—and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get it done.”
“You mean the Red is running her like a puppet.”
“Yes.”
I reach the landing just in time for a flash-bang to go off at my feet.
• • • •
I’m down on my back, looking up the stairs to the third floor. Not sure I ever want to get up again. My ears are ringing, my chest aching—hell, everything hurts all over again—my eyes are dazzled, my D-NVGs are askew on my face, and those pills have got my heart racing so fast I think I’m going to have a heart attack.
“You’re supposed to wear your helmet,” Fadul says as she bounds up from the first floor. She’s speaking on gen-com, so her voice reaches me through my earbuds. I couldn’t hear her otherwise, not with the roar of the Black Hawks. Even so, her voice is muffled and reverberant. I wonder if my ears are bleeding.
I turn my head. Jaynie’s nowhere in sight. I reach for my Lasher. Fadul kicks it away. “You talked yourself out of the mission, Shelley. I’m not sure whose side you’re on.”
She pauses just long enough to reach into my vest pocket and retrieve the fragmentation grenade she gave me. “Just in case,” she says. As she pockets it, she fires her HITR one-handed, launching a grenade straight into the window wall. The shock wave blasts past us as glass sprays out across the courtyard.
I cringe, sure that a bigger explosion will follow. But it doesn’t.
“Vasquez,” Fadul warns over gen-com, “that’s to let you know I’m serious. I reloaded on the way in. I’ve got two more rounds. And you do not want to be up there, ground zero, when those charges go off. You got five seconds to clear out.”
“Goddamn it, Fadul,” I rasp. I grab her leg strut to help me sit up. Looking up at her from the floor, she’s fucking
intimidating, rigged out when I’m not. “You don’t think this whole building is going to come down when you set those charges off?”
“Maybe,” she concedes. “But I’m not leaving this for Abajian’s crew. Our job is to make sure everyone is visible, everyone accountable. And Monteiro is not going to be visible or accountable when she sets up her own L-AIs. So get the fuck out of here, and I’ll be—”
She twists around, bringing her HITR up to shoot at something overhead. I don’t bother to look. There’s only one thing up there that could threaten the mission. The bullshit mission.
I throw all my weight against the strut I’m holding and yank Fadul’s foot out from under her. I don’t want her hurt. I don’t want Jaynie hurt either. I just want this to fucking stop.
Fadul goes down on her back as incoming rounds stitch the air. They plow into her shoulder and chew through the stairs above her head while her HITR punches a similar line of holes in the ceiling. The hammering crack of her weapon is about to split my skull open, but I move anyway. I throw myself over her, hoping Jaynie won’t shoot through me. As I do it, I grab for Fadul’s HITR—one hand on the stock, one on the burning barrel. The weapon is slick with blood.
Jaynie doesn’t shoot. She drops over the stairwell railing, bouncing hard on her shocks as she comes down with one foot on the landing, the other on the bottom step.
I try to twist the HITR out of Fadul’s grip. She’s hurting, but she holds on. Her synthetic voice speaks in my head.
Don’t make me kill you
. She could kill me easily if she let go of her HITR. One blow with her arm strut and she could break my skull.
Jaynie intercedes. Calm and determined, she shoves the muzzle of her own HITR past my head, jamming it into Fadul’s throat. “Drop it.”
I flinch as gunfire erupts. But Fadul’s life doesn’t blow up in my face. It’s Jaynie who’s hit. Her HITR tumbles. Her icon shifts from green to yellow. I turn my head, and in disbelief, I see her crumpled on the floor.
I wrench the HITR out of Fadul’s weakening grip and pitch it down the stairwell, almost hitting Tran, who’s charging to the rescue with his own HITR in hand.
“You shot her!” I yell at him. “Goddamn it, we promised not to shoot each other.”
“I had to do it, Shelley! Fadul needed help!”
We both turn to see Fadul with an arm hook on the railing. She heaves herself up. She’s not in good shape. Her icon is past yellow, on its way to red. Blood soaks her sleeve, drips from her fingers, bubbles pale green in night vision from her nose—but she’s operating. She is not thinking about her life bleeding away, only about the mission:
destroy Nashira
.
I’m thinking I don’t want her to die.
I lunge for her again, but this time I get a footplate in the chest. It’s a gentle shove that knocks the wind out of me and sends me hurtling back against Tran. I waste seconds trying to breathe, while Fadul turns to look up the stairway.
The dirty air over the city has been set aglow by a fiery light that shimmers in the facets of the shattered window wall as they tremble in a storm front of roaring engines.
I don’t want anyone else to die. But the Black Hawks are here.
Fadul, it’s too late.They’ll kill you before you reach that door.
Her synthetic voice comes back to me.
Don’t need to reach it.
She’s right. She doesn’t have her HITR anymore, but she’s got my fragmentation grenade.
She starts up the stairs, slowly. I don’t think she could make it on her own, but she’s powered by her dead sister.
I turn to Tran. “Take care of Vasquez. Get her out of here. And don’t come back inside.”
“But Fadul needs help!”
“I’ll help Fadul. You get Vasquez out of here. And shut down your overlay. Keep the Red out of your head before you kill us all. That is an order!”
I leave Tran and sprint after Fadul, propelled by the tireless gray bones of my artificial legs.
It really is too late.
• • • •
On the third floor, chunks of glass are tumbling in a hurricane breeze as the first of the Black Hawks roars in to circle the building. All lights are off on the craft, but night vision reveals the gunner in his window, sitting behind the machine gun. His orders will be the same as Jaynie’s: protect the vault, don’t let anyone near it. Because Abajian has a duty to deliver this site intact to the intelligence team.
Fadul knows this. At the top of the stairs, she reaches for the pin on the fragmentation grenade. If she can heave the grenade across the room, get it close to the steel door, the concussion should set off the rigged explosives—and it’s my bet that will bring the whole house down, along with the circling Black Hawk.
But that’s not going to happen. The rocket-fuel stimulant Leonid gave me has got me cranked up to a giddy superhero optimism and I am determined that this bullshit mission is not going to take anyone else’s life.
I kick off the last stair, jumping to tackle Fadul, to get her down under the sweep of the machine gun. I hit her high and hard, all my weight on her shoulders. She’s not expecting it. Her weakened grip can’t hold the grenade. It’s gone from her hand, bouncing out the shattered window wall. Her knees bend under my weight. The rig
enhances the motion, and we are falling to the floor.
It’s a fucking long way down.
On the way, the machine gun lights up in a storm of muzzle flash and thunder. The last remains of the glass wall transform into a fall of hard rain. And we hit.
I lose my grip on Fadul. Cubes of glass grind under my shoulder. I must have lost my D-NVGs because it’s fucking dark. I can taste blood. I can hear someone breathing in short, sharp gasps. I think it’s me.
Fadul is close beside me. I feel her stir.
Stay down
, I tell her. A Black Hawk is on the helipad.
It’s over.
She gives up, goes quiet—and that’s not like her.
I scan the squad icons in my overlay. Tran is our superhero: He’s the only one still green. And he’s not operating. I know, because the map shows him safe outside with Jaynie. I have to believe he listened to me, that he shut his overlay down.
Jaynie’s icon is yellow. I tell myself she’ll be okay and maybe someday she really will get to go to Mars.
The red icons worry me. I know Papa is with Logan, getting him stabilized. But shadows are creeping across Fadul’s icon; I think she’s bleeding out. And there’s a third red icon. That one is mine.
Over gen-com I hear Tran pleading, “Kanoa! Abajian! Whoever’s monitoring this network—we need medics upstairs!
Now!
”
I appreciate Tran’s concern, but he needs to understand that Abajian has a bomb to disarm.
Fadul was right, though. I talked myself out of the mission. It
was
a bullshit mission. But there would have been a lot less trouble all around if I had just opened that door.
Shadows move in the night, vaguely human-shaped. There’s a roar of wind or engines.
That’s all I’ve got.
INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION
E
VERYONE VISIBLE, EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE.
That’s what I’m thinking as I wake up, and it’s like despair is eating me from the inside out because I know after the disaster in Basra we are farther than ever from the goal. I was assigned to destroy Nashira, but Abajian was out to capture it, and I let Abajian win. Who knows what atrocities he’ll be hiding behind the screen of a well-taught L-AI?
And then, for just a few seconds, I’m mad as hell.
Why the fuck am I still alive?
How many lives do I have to burn through?
“Shelley,” Delphi says, “can you hear me?”
I blink my eyes, feeling hollowed out and dark inside. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Lock it down!
That’s what I think. It’s an instruction to my skullnet, but the calm and the control that I expect don’t come.
“Shelley,” Delphi whispers, “look at me.”
I do. I have to blink a few times to bring her eyes into focus. She’s leaning over the side of my hospital bed, a worry crease in her pretty forehead. “Welcome back,” she whispers.
My mouth is dry, but I’m close to panic, so I make myself talk. “My skullnet’s not working.”
It’s not Delphi who answers me. It’s my dad. “I had the surgeons take it out.”
I turn my head, stunned to see him standing on the other side of the bed. He looks different than I remember. Older, grayer, but more determined, if that’s possible. And then anger hits. He had no right to make that decision for me; that’s what I’m thinking. He must have used an old power of attorney to have it done. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be okay,” he assures me.
Delphi backs him up. “Vasquez learned to go without the hardware,” she says. “You can too.”
I’m in no position to fight it. Not now. And there are other things I need to know. “Is Jaynie okay?”
“Yes. She’s back in San Antonio. She’ll be fine.”
“And Fadul?” I whisper. “Escamilla? Logan? Are they alive?”
“They were medevac’d,” Delphi tells me. “That’s all I know. Abajian locked me out of the operation.”
“I need to see Kanoa!”
I try to sit up, but my dad squeezes my shoulder, just hard enough to let me know I’m not going anywhere. “It’s over, Jimmy. It’s not your battle anymore. You’re retired.”
• • • •
Time goes by and my injuries heal. I get my head straight. More or less.
I’m seeing a shrink, who prescribes measured doses of crude medications. I keep telling him that a skullnet would fix all my issues. He tells me I’m a civilian now and a skullnet would be illegal.
It’s a selective appreciation of the law. Despite everything I’ve done, the FBI leaves me alone. No one accuses
me of murder or insurrection or illegal weapons possession.
It’s good to be a war hero.
Or maybe this is just Monteiro’s way of saying thank you for delivering Nashira into her hands.
It’s been four months since Basra, but I’ve never had a word or a message from Kanoa and I still don’t know if Logan and Fadul got out alive. Delphi warns me I might never know. Leonid has disappeared too. I used to call him every few days, but he never picked up, and around the end of March, I stopped trying.
I’m not alone, though—not yet.
“Hey,” Delphi says, coming into the living room of the apartment we share. It’s a beautiful afternoon in mid-May and I’m waiting for her by the window, gazing down on the street from twenty-eight stories up. She studies me for a few seconds, a little furrow of concern in her forehead. Then she remembers herself and smiles. “Vasquez is going to want to know why you didn’t come.”
She’s got a small suitcase in her hand. I take it from her, give her a kiss, and say, “You’re a beautiful liar.”
She’s flying to San Antonio. It’s a regular thing. She goes at least once a month on company business. A few weeks ago, I went with her. Jaynie had decided to marry one of her rocket scientists, so we went for the ceremony. He’s a nice enough guy, I guess.
It was the first time Jaynie and I had spoken since Basra. Neither of us wanted to talk about the past and we’ll have nothing between us in the future, so that didn’t leave us much to say. I think we were both relieved when I got back on the plane to New York.
I walk Delphi to the door. I put my arm around her shoulder while we ride down together in the elevator. I know it’s irrational, but every time she goes I worry she
won’t be back. She senses my disquiet, but Delphi is a stern woman and instead of offering reassurance, she drops into handler mode. “Don’t forget, you’re having dinner with your dad tonight.”
She likes to hand me off to my dad when she goes out of town. I tell her, “My phone will remind me.”
“Assuming you remember to carry your phone.”
I frown and reach into my pocket to make sure it’s there. “I’ve got it.”
A phone is such fucking primitive technology, but that’s what I use these days. No overlay for me, no farsights. My dad wasn’t satisfied with stripping out my hardware. I was still high on pain meds when he coerced me into an idiot promise to go without augmentation for a year. I’m already counting the days until that’s over.
Just before we reach the lobby, I lean over and kiss Delphi again. “Come back,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. “You know I’m coming back.”
I kiss her again. I don’t know what she sees in me, except we’re veterans together. We understand each other. But her name is still on the Mars crew list for a scheduled launch that’s only fifteen months away.
We don’t talk much about that. She needs to make her own decision, but I’m hoping she gives up her slot. Whatever she decides, I won’t be going. I can’t, even if I wanted to, even if there was room. I took a psych test to prove it to her. My shrink can’t fix all the scars knotted in my brain. But I’m okay with it. I’ve fought too hard for this world to abandon it now.
Delphi has a car scheduled to pick her up. It arrives as we reach the sidewalk. I put her suitcase in the trunk, then open the door for her. She looks up at me, concern in those bright blue eyes. “Are you going to be okay, Shelley?”
I fake a smile. “Roger that.”
After she’s gone, I go for a walk. My celebrity is faded, my image is still scrubbed from most public databases, and I’ve gotten in the habit of wearing shoes when I go out, to camouflage who I am, so I’m rarely stopped—and walking gives me something to do. The sun is warm this afternoon, the air is cool, the trees are green, and flowers are blooming in the concrete barricades that guard the buildings. This is a resilient city, slowly regaining the energy it lost after Coma Day.
I walk until I wind up at my usual haunt: an open-air table in a café close to Battery Park, where I sit with a glass of fortified water and puzzle over the question of what the fuck the rest of my life is for.
It’s my habit to watch everything around me. I’ve been in too many hostile situations to ever completely relax when I’m out in the world. So I notice him as soon as he presents himself to the maître d’. Granted, Leonid Sergun is a big man and hard to miss.
He looks across the patio, right at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him wearing farsights. As soon as he spots me, he slips them off, stashing them in an inner pocket of his coat. He smiles a charming smile at the maître d’ and then weaves his way through the tables.
Leonid comes dressed like the wealthy man he is, in designer casuals topped with a charcoal-colored coat made of a burnished fabric intended to discourage passive scanning. His hair is freshly cut, his fingernails manicured.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask him as he pulls out a chair.
“Business, my friend,” he says, sitting down. “There is always business.”
“You couldn’t answer the goddamn phone?”
The café chair creaks as he leans back. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You must know Abajian has people watching you.”
I shrug. How could it be otherwise?
“The colonel wasn’t so confident he could keep eyes on me once I left his guest quarters.”
“You’re saying it took time to persuade him?”
Leonid nods. I imagine him talking his way out of a dark-site detention facility—and I can’t help but smile in admiration. “You’re a wizard of the dark arts, Papa.”
“I debated coming to see you,” he tells me. “But I was certain you would want to know.”
I look away as my heart quickens; heat flushes from my pores. I think I know what he’s going to say. “Fadul?” I ask tentatively, remembering her icon stained with black shadows.
Against all expectation, he tells me, “Fadul will be fine. You saved her life, Shelley. Her life, and Tran’s, and Captain Vasquez’s, and, I suspect, mine. No part of that house would have been left standing if the explosives had gone off.”
So there’s that. I’m stunned. Pleased. I ask him, “Is she still with ETM 7-1?”
“This is what I am told. And your friend Escamilla, as well.”
I’m relieved to know Escamilla survived, but there is one other name Leonid hasn’t mentioned. I steel myself and ask, “What about Logan?”
“I am sorry. It was a long struggle for Logan, one that he lost just a few days ago.”
Shit.
I’ve got no words.
A waitress stops by the table to deliver a tall iced coffee and a sugary pastry to Leonid.
If I had accepted the mission I was given and opened that door, Logan would still be alive.
“You cannot blame yourself,” Leonid says, reading my mind.
I shrug. “We lost the war.”
“It could have been worse,” he tells me. “At least your President Monteiro won.”
It’s true. Things could have been worse.
I don’t know how much of the credit belongs to Monteiro, but peace has been breaking out all over. The Arctic War faded before spring. Tempers cooled in the nascent conflict between India and Pakistan. The city of Basra has been quiet since the anomalous incident in January. And while the fallout from Broken Sky continues to threaten a host of LEO satellites, at least there is now a well-funded global consortium tasked with developing a means to confront the problem of orbital debris.
History suggests this is only a respite. Monteiro captured the technology behind L-AIs, but how long before she oversteps? How long before the Red sees through it and sends someone to unbalance her plans? It’s not easy to tie down a Titan. That should scare me, but it doesn’t. Like an enemy once said, we’ve always lived with the Devil. So what?
We’ll adapt.
I take a few moments to regroup, to gather my courage, and then we go on to talk of other things. Leonid tells me of his nephews and his hopes for their futures. I tell him of Delphi. I have hopes too. Maybe neither of us has the right to hope for anything, but hell, we’re only human.
So do I regret what I’ve done?
I regret the need for it. Is that enough?
I wanted to serve. I wanted to be the good guy, to do the right thing. But how do you know if the sacrifices you’re asked to make are worthwhile? If the blood on your hands means something? You don’t know. You can’t. That’s the soldier’s dilemma. What it comes down to is trust. Do you trust those who send you into battle?
In the end, Leonid lifts a fresh glass of iced coffee. “To those we have lost,” he says.
I touch my glass to his. “Never forgotten.”
He uses his phone to settle the bill, adding a generous tip, and we walk out together.