Outriders (13 page)

Lincoln nodded. There were still so many questions, but before he could ask any of them, he received a connection request through his internal channel. Colonel Almeida.

“One sec,” he said. “Colonel’s buzzing me.” He tapped the dermal pad on his arm to open the line. “Captain Suh here.”

“Captain,” Almeida said through the channel. “I need you back at the PFAC.”

“Yes, sir,” Lincoln said. “We’re at the lab now.”

“Are you done?”

“Not sure, actually, sir.”

“Well wrap it up and get over here. I need to bring you up to speed on a couple of things before we brief the team.”

“Can you give me a preview?” Lincoln asked.

“Negative. Situation’s developing. Be here now.”

“Understood, I’m on my way.”

Lincoln closed the channel.

“Sounds serious,” Mike said.

“Yeah,” Lincoln said, standing up. “Guess we better find the major.”

He opened the door and Mike followed him out. Blackwell was standing in the corridor.

“I just got called in by my CO,” Lincoln said. “You need anything else from me?”

“Technically, no,” Blackwell said. “But you really should take that course.”

“Yeah,” Lincoln said. “I’ll get right on that.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Mike said, flashing his smile. Blackwell scowled. Lincoln led the way down the hall and back outside.

Once they were out of the facility, Mike said, “If you want to talk through more of the details or whatever, maybe the colonel or Lieutenant Kennedy can give you a better briefing. But we should hustle back to the PFAC. Mom doesn’t much like waiting.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s true,” Lincoln said. He just managed to stop himself from adding,
and that’s about the only thing I’m sure of.

They walked the rest of the way back in silence, and Lincoln’s mind tumbled over itself as he tried to assimilate his new reality, to find a place for it to fit amongst the familiar pre-mission emotions. From the way Almeida had spoken to him, he knew work was coming, serious work that required his full focus and attention. And the more he turned his thoughts to the mission ahead, whatever it was, the less important seemed any of what he’d just learned at the lab. Maybe he was just rationalizing. He couldn’t quite forget the idea of his replica, of course, but he was starting to convince himself that it was something he could think about later. Maybe even safely ignore. It was, after all, a contingency he planned never to need.

Still.

He shook his head as they neared the planning facility. Colonel Almeida had told him he would be making high-stakes decisions on partial data, and that he’d have to make the best of the consequences. When Lincoln had made his snap decision to join the Outriders, he hadn’t quite realized just how much those consequences were already upon him.

SIX

L
INCOLN FOUND
Colonel Almeida in his office on the “business” side of the 519th’s planning facility. With him was a grim-faced young woman in uniform, and the two of them were huddled over a display set in the colonel’s desk. Lincoln knocked on the door frame.

“Captain Suh,” Almeida said, glancing at him briefly and then motioning him into the office with a sharp gesture.

“Sir,” Lincoln said.

“This is Lieutenant Davis,” said the colonel, “from the 23rd Military Intelligence Brigade. Stephanie, this is my new team leader, Lincoln Suh.”

“Good to meet to you, sir,” Davis said.

“Lieutenant,” Lincoln answered. “Stephanie Davis? You aren’t by any chance related to Colonel Tim Davis, are you?”

“Tim’s my dad, yes sir,” she said cautiously, with a puzzled expression. “You know him?”

“A bit,” Lincoln said. “He pulled my team out of some nasty business a few years back. A lot of mountains, a lot of gunfire. I seem to remember him having a picture of his little girl up front with him.”

Davis gave a subdued smile, and nodded. “You’ve got a good memory for faces, then.”

“Goes with the job,” Lincoln said. “Your dad’s an amazing pilot. He’s an even better man. Is he still with the 920th?”

“No sir, he retired last year.”

“If you two are done…” Almeida said, all business. The intensity of his expression made him seem like a different man than the one Lincoln had ridden with the day before.

“Yes, sir,” Lincoln said.

“Lieutenant, give us a minute,” the colonel said.

“Yes, sir,” Davis said. She slipped out into the hall and closed the door behind her.

“Davis and I are going to brief the team here in a minute,” the colonel continued, once she was gone. “Normally, I’d want you up front running the show, but things are moving too fast right now. We’ve got to get rolling. Don’t take this as any indication of my faith in you. I have every confidence in your abilities to lead my kids.”

“Understood, sir,” Lincoln said.

“I knew when I recruited you that I was throwing you into the fire,” Almeida said. “I just didn’t expect it to be quite so soon, or to be burning this hot. I was hoping to give you a couple of weeks to run with the team, to get to know them and how they operate. I’m afraid you’re going to have to do all of that live.”

“Are we deploying?”

“We’re on standby. Decision hasn’t been made officially yet, but I’d expect it soon.”

Lincoln felt his gut twist with a strange mix of emotion; the familiar exhilaration that always came with a mission, tinged with an unusual note of anxiety. He tried to tell himself he’d done this all before, but he didn’t really believe it. What had he gotten himself into?

“I don’t make mistakes, captain,” Almeida said, as if reading his mind. “You’ll find your way.”

“I’ll do my best, colonel,” Lincoln answered.

“I’m counting on it,” said Almeida, nodding. “You can head on over to the briefing room, and send the lieutenant back in. She and I will be there in just a few minutes. If anybody asks, tell them we’ve got a worthy one.”

“Yes sir,” Lincoln said. He saluted and left the office. Lieutenant Davis was waiting just outside. “The colonel said you can go back in,” he said to her. She nodded and started back in.

“Lieutenant,” he said, and she paused in the doorway. “Give your dad my best, if you would.”

“Of course,” Davis replied. She lingered a moment longer, and then nodded and disappeared into the colonel’s office.

Lincoln drew a deep breath to settle himself, and walked the long corridors to the PFAC’s briefing room.

W
HEN HE REACHED IT
, Wright and Pence were already there; the master sergeant sat at the middle table in a seat at the far end, while Sergeant Pence sat on top of the table at the back of the room, feet dangling. The briefing room was smaller than Lincoln was used to, which was saying something. He couldn’t remember ever having been in a briefing room that felt spacious. But this one had an especially close-in feel that made him instinctively tuck his elbows and round his shoulders, like he was walking too-narrow aisles of some fine-china boutique. There were three rows of tables, each a gentle arc bent towards the front of the room where a single podium sat off-center. Six chairs sat behind each table, but Lincoln figured if they ever had to fit eighteen people in there, he’d want to be really good buddies with his neighbors beforehand.

“Hey, boss,” Pence said. “What’s the word?”

Lincoln shook his head. “Don’t know exactly yet. The colonel’s still putting the final touches on the packet, and he was pretty light on details. He should be here in a minute.” He lingered by the door for a moment. “You guys got usual seats?”

“Nah,” Pence answered. “Just don’t sit on the front row, else mas’sarnt will pelt you with spitballs the whole time.”

Wright’s stern expression didn’t change, and Lincoln didn’t feel quite so bad that he hadn’t gotten a smile out of her before. He took a seat at the near end of the middle row, taking Pence’s suggestion without crowding Wright’s space.

“Far be it from me to ignore the advice of senior enlisted,” he said to Wright, and then smiled as he sat down.

As he was taking his seat, Sergeant Coleman walked in, followed by Sahil. Sahil moved to the back row, punched Lincoln in the shoulder with the back of his hand as he passed by. Coleman sat down in the first seat on the front row and then swiveled around to face Lincoln.

“Captain,” she said. “I think you’re sitting on the wrong side of the podium there, bud.”

“I’m still too fresh off the farm,” Lincoln said. “Colonel Almeida’s going to run this one himself.”

“Oh,” Coleman said nodding. “He give you any previews?”

“He just said if you guys asked, to tell you it was a ‘worthy one’.”

“Uh oh,” Mike said from behind him. Lincoln glanced over his shoulder.

“I’m guessing that means more to you than it does to me,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” Mike replied. “He’s always griping about us getting sent out for work regular people could do. Just means he thinks this one’s actually worth our time. Which means we’re about to walk into a
reeeeal
goat rodeo.”

“I’ll give you three-to-one it’s another NID bag,” Coleman said.

“Three-to-one for or against?” Pence asked. She made a face at him, like it was a waste of breath to answer.

At that moment, Almeida strode in and everyone stood. The colonel went straight to the podium without even looking at the team. Davis trailed behind him uncertainly, a grave look on her face. She risked a glance at Lincoln and his crew, and then quickly returned her eyes to the floor in front of her. Coleman and Sahil looked at each other. Pence didn’t return to his perch on the table, but instead slid into a seat next to Wright. From the general reaction of the others, Lincoln picked up that this already wasn’t business as usual. The colonel tapped a few strokes on the podium’s panel, dimming the lights and activating the projector.

“We’re spinning up, kids,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to cover and not a lot of time, so I’m just going to let the lieutenant here jump right to it. This is Lieutenant Davis, one of the top analysts over with the 23rd. Not how we usually do things, I know, but I’d rather you hear this straight from the source. She’s going to run you through the highlights.”

Almeida backed off to one corner of the room, and the lieutenant stepped up to the podium. She took a settling breath before she started.

“Afternoon, everyone.”

After a moment, she brought an image up on the projector, showing a three-dimensional image of a man Lincoln didn’t recognize.

“This is Henry Sann,” Lieutenant Davis said. “Henry was the senior-most field officer for the NID’s MARSCENT division.” Pence let out a little grunt at that, undoubtedly impressed with the implied credentials Mr Sann must have possessed to be so high up the chain in the National Intelligence Directorate’s Central Martian operations. That put him smack in the middle of the NID’s most active area on Mars. The burden of responsibility he bore gave Lincoln a headache just thinking about it.

“Nine days ago, he was shot and killed in a cafe in Elliston, while meeting with a source,” Davis said.

“
Nine
days ago?” Coleman said, incredulously. “How’s this the first time we’re hearing anything about it?”

Davis glanced at Almeida, who nodded. She looked back at Coleman.

“Because he was undeclared, sergeant,” she answered. That gave everyone in the room pause. Working for the Directorate on foreign turf, even on friendly ground, made Henry Sann a spy. But being
undeclared
meant he was essentially operating on his own; he wasn’t afforded any of the protections that usually came along with official cover. In the normal spy game, if he’d been detected or had his cover blown, the host nation would have quietly packaged him up and sent him home with a stern warning and maybe some diplomatic rumblings. Undeclared, though, meant being treated as a domestic if caught; prison, at best, and usually much, much worse.

“Someone blow his cover?” Mike asked. “One of our Eastern friends’ agencies maybe?”

Davis shook her head. “Not that we’ve been able to pick up on. NID’s notorious about keeping tabs on their undecs, and pulling them out at the first hint of trouble. Often unnecessarily. We’ve lost a lot of good sources because of their…” She paused, looking for the diplomatic option. “…
sensitivity
to risk.”

“And we know the Directorate didn’t burn him themselves,” Lincoln said. A moment of tense silence followed. Out of the corner of his eye, Lincoln saw Wright glance over at the colonel with her eyebrows raised. It wasn’t exactly good etiquette to raise the possibility, but Lincoln was never one to let politeness get in the way of understanding a situation completely.

“That’s not how they operate,” Davis said.

“You’re
certain,
” Lincoln said, pressing the issue. Because he knew all too well that, rare as it might have been, NID did in fact handle compromised officers and agents exactly that way. They just typically relied on other parties to do the actual work for them.

“As certain as anyone can be in this business, captain,” Davis answered finally. “And then there’s this…”

She cycled the projector to another image, this one an apparent debris field in open space. Some destroyed satellite, Lincoln guessed, or maybe a small shuttle. “Thirty-six hours ago, the civilian station Veryn-Hakakuri YN-773 suffered a catastrophic collision with an unidentified space body. The image you see here is what’s left.”

The young lieutenant paused a moment, either to let that sink in, or because she was wrestling through the emotions of the news. Even the smallest stations were vast structures;
catastrophic collision
must have been an understatement almost to the point of absurdity. Lincoln looked at the image with new perspective, felt his mind twist with the shift in scale. With the new information, his brain reorganized the debris, picked out different details; the section he’d thought might have been remnants of a shuttle cockpit must have been fifty times the size. An observation deck, or hydroponic capsule maybe.

“Search and rescue crews are still a few hours out,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “but based on scans coming back from our whiskers… our current assessment is that there were no survivors.” WISCR drones could travel much faster than any crewed ship and so the earliest reports on just about any event almost always came from them. No survivors. How many souls did it take to keep a hop up and running? A thousand? Two thousand?