Authors: Christopher McKitterick
“
EarthCo Air 17
th
Cav, Sub-Boss Hanrad here, sir,” a young woman’s 3VRD said, standing before Nadir in the crowded cabin. Her ritually scarred face rippled with excitement, each word formed carefully and large on her mouth. It struck him that he’d never before seen a female Boss in Africa.
She would be her unit’s Boss now
, he thought, though none of the EarthCo units called anyone Boss but him.
“
Go ahead,” Nadir replied. The Chinese Sotoi Guntai watched in silence.
“
We’ve bumped into an ARMCo light-armored battalion, Boss, three klicks northwest.” She sent a brief tactical, showing Nadir a data-rich, eagle-eye view of the desert locale, 100 by 100 kilometers. A second later, she continued.
“
We executed standard routine, transmitted the EarthCo/NKK crime package”—what Nadir’s army had come to call their previous feed— “but no response. What are your orders?”
Nadir hadn’t expected opposition, especially not from the tiny Arab corp. So far, every EarthCo unit Boss or NKK Commander at first balked at the appeal to join, then most prepared to attack, and then all but one EarthCo Boss was executed by his own men—the recordings of other EarthCo Warriors doing the same seemed to help them make what had been a tough decision to the units that had marched with the Sotoi Guntai. Nadir said nothing when they asked advice what to do with their Bosses; he comforted them afterward.
It seemed NKK ran things differently: Only three Commanders had been aware of their superiors’ plans—these units required more talking, but all three ended up part of the army. One by one, every individual unit they met fell into formation. As each merged with the whole, they, too, witnessed the strange blackout of being isolated from the EarthCo and NKK Worldnets—both in feed and feedback.
Nadir wondered if, perhaps, little ARMCo was behind the silence.
Impossible
, he told himself.
“
Are they cut off from their nets?” he asked the woman.
“
Our netman says yeah, like everyone else.”
“
Give them five minutes,” Nadir said. “If they don’t want to join, we can’t let them go off and tell everyone about us, can we now?”
“
No, sir!”
Nadir patched into the whirlyjet’s external-forward pov camera and zoomed in on where the ARMCo battalion stood. He found them and upped the resolution. No infantry were visible, only 120 “rats”—ARMCo one-man tanks that sported the equivalent of EMMA-Bs and NKK-built plasma cannons—sat dead motionless on the sand. The unified army hadn’t yet surrounded the battalion, but Mabalasiks and Tigers were beginning to appear in the pov.
“
I’ll speak with them,” the Commander said intheflesh. Not long in the past, NKK and ARMCo had been virtual allies, until NKK claimed the African land they had helped hold against EarthCo.
Nadir felt his heart-rate increase as the rats moved in unison to the east. They stopped again. No shots were fired.
This could fuck up everything
, he thought. Though the battalion wouldn’t last five minutes against more than 500 assorted pieces of NKK and EarthCo armor and half that many gunships, it would hurt. And for nothing!—ARMCo wasn’t his enemy. Nadir’s stomach tightened and he had to shut his aiming eye to keep it from twitching.
He couldn’t stand the silence, so he flicked through the BWs until he found the one his ally and the ARMCo leader were using.
“
. . .not order me to do anything!” a man wearing a full face of black beard shouted. It was old tech; his lips didn’t even sync.
“
Please review the data we sent,” the Sotoi Guntai said, calm and nearly monotone.
“
We always knew you and the Western pigs would unite against us!” the ARMCo leader raged. “Now we see—”
“
Shut up,” Nadir interrupted. Both men’s 3VRDs fell silent and stared at him. “Listen, sir,” he addressed the ARMCo man, “we wish no conflict with you. If we did, don’t you think we’d have destroyed you by now?”
“
Because you’re afraid!” the ARMCo leader said. He didn’t seem able to speak below a roar, though his low-res 3VRD looked like a retro cartoon.
“
Bullshit,” Nadir said. He opened a commline through the whirlyjet’s pov cameras. “Have a look.”
The man immediately spliced into one after another pov, then leaped down to several ground-based povs. All the while, the Chinese Commander sat stiff and unmoving, his mouth pulled into a frown.
“
Lies,” the ARMCo leader finally said. But Nadir didn’t miss the decreased intensity in the man’s voice.
“
You think so?” Nadir asked. “You really want to test us on this matter? I’ll be damned fucking glad to oblige, sir. We’ve wasted enough time on talk. If you’re unwilling to join us against the criminals at EarthCo War Command and then NKK’s generals, well, that’s your choice. We won’t fight you either way. But we’ve talked enough!”
He snapped the commline shut from the whirlyjet’s small server, also cutting off the Commander. Nadir felt a moment of worry, fully aware he had never been given command over the army, that the Sotoi Guntai still outnumbered the EarthCo Warriors and the NKK heavy armor was the only of its kind down there. If the Chinese Commander called on his forces to revolt against the “butchering EarthCo dogs,” Nadir would end up in command of nothing, and the combined army would be a few Mabalasik tanks rolling across the desert with burns on their hulls.
Nadir decided momentum was his greatest resource, perhaps his only one.
“
Hanrad,” he commed to the EarthCo Sub-Boss. She promptly appeared. “Set your unit in motion.” He opened the allband BW, which the ARMCo units would also feed. “Everyone move out, bearing adjust two degrees west.”
“
Boss,” Hanrad said, her face concerned yet excited, “that’ll put us on top of those ARMCo rats.”
“
Yes, it will,” Nadir said. “All units, hold your fire. Don’t even look at our ARMCo friends as we pass. But if they fire, take out only the individual rats that attack. We don’t want a bloodbath here. Maybe there’s a few good soldiers in their ranks, too. If not, be ready to blast ’em all.”
He spliced from one pov to another, watching the legions of tanks, whirlyjets, and light EarthCo and NKK cars again set in motion. He recalled pictures of ancient armies forced to march by foot and then, tired after hours of marching over rugged terrain, fight. The cheap personnel car had changed all that.
Soon, Hanrad’s unit was virtually indistinguishable from the bullet-shaped ARMCo rats. And then the light tanks were engulfed, their cannon muzzles bristling amid a rush of plastic and steel.
Still no fire. But also, still no comm from the ARMCo leader. Nadir was glad for the cabin’s cold wind rushing through—it dried the nervous sweat breaking out on his back and armpits.
What if they just sit there? What if they don’t agree to join us?
The whole point of this war is that people were killed when they didn’t need to be.
How is what I’m doing any different?
And yet….
They’ll have to be destroyed
, he told himself. He had known it all along.
Five minutes passed. Nadir’s and the Commander’s whirlyjet circled their army three times as it rolled past the rats. When the Tiger tanks bringing up the rear were in range of the rats, Nadir knew now was the time to decide.
He opened a secure line to the ARMCo leader. “Have you decided?”
“
Go to hell!” the other screamed. Nadir noted the shrill wavering of the man’s voice.
“
No one is listening right now.” He paused. “Do you still deny the size of our combined force? You must know that if you don’t join us, I’ll be forced to smash your little tanks into dust! So what is your decision?”
No response.
“
If you can’t decide, I’ll find another of your men who can.”
“
Are you threatening me?”
“
No,” Nadir said, calmly. “I want you to be my ally. You would enjoy the same respect as those Sotoi Guntai and other NKK units you saw. I wouldn’t threaten an ally. I am merely explaining the consequences of your making the wrong decision.”
Nadir watched the man cast about the impromptu network woven through the desert night;
Trying to see if anyone’s eavesdropping
, Nadir thought.
“
You won’t simply let us go on with our mission?” the man said. No longer did his words contain venom.
“
I can’t do that. Can you imagine what War Command would do to this army if they found out what we’re up to? No, I can’t let you go. But I would be very pleased if you combined your forces with ours. You will be rewarded in the end; who knows—maybe your corp will have a chance to take the superpowers to international court. Maybe you’ll get North Africa back.”
“
This is not attractive to me,” the man said. “I will face court-martial from my superiors, and they are not criminals.”
Just then, Hanrad’s 3VRD appeared on another BW. She had correctly guessed Nadir’s plan.
Not yet
, he thought, wishing she could read his mind.
“
Your decision,” Nadir said, and cut off the BW. He opened his commline to Hanrad.
“
Wait one more minute,” he told her. Even as he spoke, the ARMCo BW-signal lit at the corner of his pov. He smiled and waited a few seconds, then opened it.
“
I, Sheik Dominique Filre Hassad, declare that your NKK and EarthCo soldiers may assist us in ridding the African continent of trespassers,” the ARMCo leader said.
Nadir noted the man used an allband similar to his own.
Everyone’s listening
, he thought. Hopefully no one will laugh.
“
We accept your generous offer to join forces,” Nadir replied. He looked across the whirlyjet’s crew cabin at the Chinese Commander, who apparently had been staring at Nadir.
“
Do you accept the Sheik’s offer, Commander?” Nadir asked.
The man’s face split into a wide grin that looked somehow out of-place on the man. “You astound me,” he said, then told everyone that he, too, accepted the ARMCo addition.
Nadir drew a deep breath and shut down his commcard. Everything was running smoothly again, and his plan was still simple and direct—almost naïve, he knew, but perhaps justice requires a bit of innocence.
He booted the audio program. Once again, the jet-voiced orchestra played in his head. He closed his eyes and silently added a new verse to a dead monopera:
I’m alive
I’m alive in the desert night.
We will fight for right
’
til death
Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, Earth: Pehr Jackson and Jonathan Sombrio walked side-by-side along a cracked and cratered sidewalk. Behind them followed a girl named Nooa.
“
The artifact,” Pehr began. “When Janus and I got close enough. . . .
This sounds crazy. Why does the Brain want to hear this?”
“
Knock it off,” the boy said. “Anyway, I’d like to hear it, too.”
Pehr stopped walking and stared at Jonathan. He didn’t like the boy’s manner much at all. This was just some street punk hired by a powerful, faceless somebody. Pehr studied the small, quiet girl. Patience
. . .
maybe I can get answers by answering some, even if they only further confuse reality.
“
All right, I’ll tell you a story that feels like a memory.” Pehr took a deep breath and continued walking—toward where, he wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t stand still. This night, cool and dark and empty, felt much like those nights here a decade ago. . . .
“
This guy, named EConaut Captain Pehr Jackson, and this woman, Janus Librarse. . .” His voice trailed off.
“
Please go on,” the girl said from behind.
Pehr drew a deep breath, concentrated, and his voice naturally mutated into Captain Jackson’s.
I must be an actor
, he thought.
This is much easier than using my own. So that fragment of memory is accurate
.
“
They walked around and around St. John’s Cathedral—well, he did, while she saw instead some kind of alien place. Somehow, when they shut down their cards, what had been a black sphere appeared as two different holy places, based on what each thought was holy.” Pehr couldn’t help feeling a little quickened by the memory.