Going Dark (14 page)

I want to argue with him: that I was not in my right mind that night; that I’d been too close to death too many times to think I had any right to a real life; that the Red had engineered the decision for me. But I remember how I felt then, both the slow, shaking recovery from hypothermia and the passionate conviction that I had been called to this duty, that it was necessary and honorable, that I would give what I had, do what I could.

I still don’t know if that was
my
decision. I do know I haven’t changed my mind.

Kanoa speaks in a conciliatory tone. “It could be years before they leave.”

He means I could be dead long before it happens.

He adds, “Sometimes we want incompatible things.”

My gaze has wandered. I make myself look at him again. “I still think we’ll get this mission. And if we do, you’re not going to be able to trust Cory Helms to do his part.”

“I need you to get your head together, Shelley.”

I know he’s right. I do want incompatible things.

“And Shelley? Stay away from Cory Helms.”

•  •  •  •

At 1202, bandwidth vandals jam access to GPS along a stretch of Interstate 35 on the outskirts of San Antonio. Safety overrides programmed into an autonomous tanker truck fail to properly execute, leading to a fiery collision with a semi, also autonomous, that is hauling custom components for ShotFusion’s Mars project. No one is killed, but both vehicles are destroyed, and ShotFusion’s development program is predicted to be delayed for months. Cory is convinced it’s my fault.

I am summoned back to Kanoa’s office.

•  •  •  •

This time, Cory is there, standing to one side of Kanoa’s desk, an angry blush to his cheeks as he glares at me. Kanoa is leaning back in his chair, looking aggravated. He spends a lot of time tracking potential ETM recruits. That’s what he’d be doing now if we weren’t wasting his time on absurd personnel issues.

I sit down in the same chair I used before. “I did it. I hacked those trucks.”

Kanoa rolls his eyes. “For the record, Shelley. Did you have any advance knowledge of the I-35 incident, or anything at all to do with sabotaging ShotFusion’s Mars project?”

“No, sir. I did not. It was a coincidence.”

I watch his focus shift as he checks my physiological status, confirming I’m telling the truth. He looks at Cory. “You satisfied?”

Cory doesn’t believe in coincidence any more than I do. “You wanted it to happen,” he says. “And when you put the idea out there, you
made
it happen.”

He might be right. I think maybe he is. And if so? I’m not sorry. “Everyone visible, everyone accountable,” I remind him.

“If you think this will stop them, it won’t.”

“It’s enough for now,” I counter. “The project’s delayed. There’s time for a new element to come into play.”

“Or for an old one to be taken off the board,” Kanoa growls. “Shelley, get the hell out of here.”

I go, sure that Kanoa will be able to talk Cory down and convince him that this is just a setback, not the existential disaster he thinks it is. But later that afternoon, a notice goes out to direct all information requests to Bryson Kominski, our senior intelligence analyst, who lives and works off site. Cory has decided to take a few days of leave.

I don’t like it, but Kanoa thinks he needs time.

The personnel van departs in the late afternoon, with Cory the sole passenger aboard.

•  •  •  •

0531. I awake.

The abrupt transition—deep sleep to full awareness in the time it takes to open my eyes—tells me the event is not natural. I’ve been awakened by an alert sent through my skullnet, and that means we’ve got an active situation.

My heart initiates a fast march, fired by a guilty suspicion that the Arctic War has taken a turn for the worse.

I throw off the thin blanket, get to my feet, grab my pants. I’m pulling them on when an order comes through my overlay, spoken in Kanoa’s voice:
Squad meeting, 0540, conference hall.

No order to rig up in armor and bones. So the threat is not imminent. I resist the urge to shoot questions at Kanoa. Instead, I link to an audio newsfeed, listening to a summary of world events while I get my uniform on. The lead story is the winter bases being set up across the Arctic ice by the Russians, the Canadians, and the Chinese, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is due in front of Congress to argue for our own “permanent” presence—a request that the non-interventionist wing is expected to vigorously reject as part of their ongoing assault on the president’s wartime powers. The next bit is backgrounded with an enraged Arabic speaker. My skullnet starts to translate, but then the mediot is speaking in English, something about the biowarfare lab in the Arctic—a story that just won’t die.

I drop the newsfeed and step into the hallway. Tran is just exiting his quarters. His dark eyes turn to me in anticipation. “We going out again?”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

More doors open. Roman and Dunahee fall in with us, but Tran waves off their questions. “He doesn’t know.” We descend the stairs and head outside.

Dawn hasn’t reached us. The night sky is a hazy dark-gray vault set with muted stars. Right away, I am aware of the metallic taste of dust in the cool air—a factor I rarely notice in the heat of the day. No wind blows, and I hear no sound except our own footfalls and the annoying clicking of my feet. Impatient to learn the reason for the call-out, I
move into a fast trot. Tran, Roman, and Dunahee keep up, falling naturally into formation, two by two as we follow the illuminated sidewalk to the Cyber Center.

On the way I think
map
, and the squad map pops up in the corner of my vision. A glance shows Logan, Fadul, and Escamilla coming behind us. We push past the Cyber Center’s light-shielding double doors. The conference hall is just inside.

Kanoa is already standing at the podium, his uniform neat, his expression unreadable. I check his icon as I take a seat in the front row. Kanoa is an iceman. The worse the crisis, the calmer he reads. Right now, his blood pressure and heart rate would reflect well on a Buddhist monk.

He waits until everyone is seated. Then he begins without preamble.

“Forty-two minutes ago, a modified YGH-77 missile was launched from a BXL21 road-mobile missile launcher in Kazakhstan. The missile struck and destroyed a target in low Earth orbit using a non-nuclear kinetic warhead.

“The attack is considered an act of terrorism. The Kazakh government has captured the missile launcher and is currently attempting to recover the terrorists who operated it.

“Immediately prior to the attack, a message appeared across social media attributing the imminent strike to the Shahin Council, a name I’m sure you’ve all heard many times before.”

Too many times. The Shahin Council is a transnational terrorist network—or an underground drug and weapons cartel. It gets hard to tell the difference. “The immediate damage caused by this strike is somewhat minor. The implications are not.

“An object in low Earth orbit is not an easy target to hit. The satellite in question was about four hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface and moving at seven and a half
kilometers per second when it was struck—demonstrating that accuracy in guidance and targeting is no longer limited to elite militaries.”

His gaze locks on me. “The Semak Hermitage was the target. It’s been obliterated.”

Eighteen months ago I visited Eduard Semak at the Hermitage. Two days ago, Eduard’s daughter and heir, Yana Semakova, spoke on global television, arguing against the Arctic War.

I don’t believe in coincidence.

“They chose that target because she spoke out.”

“According to the posted message,” Kanoa says, “the target was chosen because it was unoccupied. ‘A merciful demonstration of sophisticated capabilities.’”

“It’s more than that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “What matters is that every satellite at a similar altitude must now be considered vulnerable—a huge section of our communications infrastructure. But there’s more to it. The Hermitage was a large satellite. Some of the debris will fall into the atmosphere, burning up on reentry, but a large part will remain in orbit—a debris field that will gradually expand upward and outward, posing a collision hazard for other satellites. There is a deeper message: that the situation in LEO could get much worse, real fast.

“Right now, most satellites can be moved out of the path of known fragments of debris. But that will get harder if the amount of debris increases—say, after another habitat gets hit. At orbital speeds, every fragment, down to a single screw, has the potential to collide with a working satellite, striking with the energy of a bomb. And every collision creates even more debris. Given time and malice enough, LEO could be filled with a cloud of fast-moving particles so dense that no rocket could be successfully launched through it. It’s called
the Kessler Syndrome, and it has the potential to lock us out of all access to space for centuries to come.”

“That’s
fucked
,” Tran says, sounding personally offended. “Who the hell would want that?”

Fadul knows the answer. “Psychopaths. Every time.”

“The claim,” Kanoa says, “is that it was done as retaliation, to hit back at those who sponsored the biowarfare project recently discovered in the Arctic.”

“Ah shit,” Logan says. “That rumor again? That’s been disproven.”

“The mediots keep pushing it,” I tell him.

Kanoa nods. “And the Shahin Council has reason to exploit it. Last week, one of their members collapsed on stage while delivering a speech. A young and healthy man, he was dead within half an hour. Maybe he was murdered. Maybe God struck him down. Frankly, I don’t care. The significant fact for us is that we had no warning of the orbital strike until the Shahin Council’s announcement. Our intelligence network picked up no hint, no rumor that it was going to happen—”

“Wait,” Tran says, sounding rattled. “You’re saying the Red didn’t know anything about this?”

Kanoa nods. “That’s what I’m saying, Alex. Our most optimistic interpretation is that this operation was set up in some sort of shadow world that the Red couldn’t perceive. Not visually, not electronically, not through spies or statistics or behavior studies.”

“I got a feeling it’s figured things out now,” Fadul says. “Even if these clowns have another launcher, they’re going to get slapped down hard.”

“Agreed,” Kanoa says. “And every legitimate government in the world is going to be on this.”

“You said that’s the optimistic interpretation,” I remind him. “What’s the pessimistic read?”

Kanoa’s answer is grim. “That the Red facilitated this attack as part of a long-term strategy to limit access to space.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Logan asks. He gives me an uneasy glance. “I mean, after what happened to the Mars rocket . . .”

“No,” Kanoa answers. “I don’t think it’s likely. I don’t think it’s remotely compatible with the Red’s strategy. Satellite communication and surveillance technology are part of the Red’s sensory system. Sacrificing them to prevent future expeditions to Mars doesn’t make sense.”

Logan nods willing agreement. “And the Red’s already shown it knows how to slam the Mars projects without slamming the world.”

“So we’re back to the optimistic interpretation,” I say. “If you really want to call it that. The Red got blindsided by the Shahin Council, and we have no idea how. And we were blindsided in the Arctic. That whole mission, it felt like the Red didn’t really know what was going on, or it was distracted, or it was of two minds . . .” I hesitate. Not for the first time, I wonder if we’re wrong to think of the Red as a single entity. Why would it have to be? “You think these two incidents could be related, Kanoa?”

He ponders this for several seconds. “It’s too early to say—and we have more immediate concerns. Records show that at least nineteen missile launchers have been sold into questionable hands.”

“That’s a lot,” Escamilla says. “You think we’ll get orders?”

“It’s possible.”

ETM 7-1 operates under the paradigm
Everything visible, everything accountable
. But if the Red can be distracted or manipulated to the point that a look-and-see mission escalates into a regional conflict, or if it can be altogether blinded to a large-scale operation, then we’re going to lose the war.

It’s discouraging. It takes so little to constitute an
existential threat to the world, while relentless, merciless action is required to push back against that threat. If nineteen missile launchers wound up in “questionable hands,” then how many lesser, but still lethal, weapons do the terrorists, the crusaders, the dragons of the world control? All wanting to impose a restricted existence or outright death on those around them.

There is no end to this war.

Maybe it’s true that most people want to live in peace—I have my doubts—but most people never get to make a choice. “Most people”—whoever they are—have always lived at the whim of those willing to use violence to get their way. Most people, throughout history, have gone along with it, willing to be entertained by the spectacle of a beheading, the horror of a living person set on fire, the thunder of shock and awe. Nothing has changed in the modern world except that each of us has the potential to generate more destruction than ever before. And nothing
will
change. Evil intent will always be with us, and there will always be another battle to fight.

•  •  •  •

Nine hours later, I’m in the cafeteria, brooding over an empty plate. Fadul is at the opposite end of the table, brooding on tragedies all her own, while Tran has invited himself to sit down across from me with a freshly microwaved meal steaming on his tray. He looks up in feral anticipation as we all get linked into gen-com—Tran can’t wait for the next mission—but Kanoa kills his enthusiasm with a grim announcement: “Strike two.”

Another dragon lair has been hit. This time, there are five people aboard, and there’s video.

“Push it through,” I tell Kanoa.

The video was recorded by an STS spaceplane on approach to the habitat. “Was this a scheduled run?” I ask.