The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (48 page)

My eyes are clamped to slits against the force of the wind but I crane my neck anyway and try to look. Nothing’s there. . . . Maybe that’s a good sign? If the chute weren’t deployed I’d see the stars.

Right?

Maybe I’m looking up at a cloud deck.

Nothing I can do about it anyway.

I look down.

I’ve seen the world from orbit. This is a well-lit planet. There are only a few places in all the world that are still dark at night. Too bad for me the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of them. There is not a spark of bright yellow, not a speck of electric white. No ship’s lights, no shore. All I can see is a faint glittering of moonlight reflected and refracted in fine, sinuous, broken, watery lines.

I twist around to look behind me. The movement sends me reeling sideways like I’m on a fucking carnival swing but I get a view in the other direction—and it’s just more moonlight on water, endless water, nothing else.

I’m spinning, twisting, breathing hard.

How lost am I?

I need to know.

So I check my GPS. I have to close my eyes all the way to do it, to keep out the wind that wants to destroy the lenses of my overlay. Another few seconds slip past while the lenses rehydrate. Then I get the menu open. Pull up a
map. A map with nothing on it because I’m falling to Earth in the middle of fucking nowhere. I zoom out, and that reveals islands that might as well be a million miles away. I don’t bother to identify them because it doesn’t fucking matter. All I care about now is how many seconds I have left before I hit. So I open my eyes to just slits and look down.

I can see texture in the water now.

I have a feeling I’m falling too fast.

Nukes like the B
61
use parachutes in part to soften their landing, but mostly the chute serves to slow the bomb’s fall so the delivery plane has time to get away before fucking Armageddon ignites. I have been a soldier in the war against Armageddon and that is something I am proud of—but soldiers, of course, are expendable.

Oh, I can easily see the long crests and ridges of swells now, moonlight glittering on their peaks.

Soon.

I am falling too fast, I’m sure of it.

I’m sorry, Delphi.

This time for sure, I won’t be coming back.

The closer I get to the glittering dark, the faster it seems I’m falling. With my hand on my harness release, I watch the sparkle of moonlight—so hard to tell how far away the surface is—and then it’s not far at all. The scent of the sea envelopes me as spume blows off a wave crest only meters below.

I hit the harness release, kick free of the seat, and drop feetfirst into the water.

It’s farther away than I thought. When I hit it’s a hammer blow. Whatever air I had in my lungs is expelled on impact. I plunge into utter darkness with a horde of tingling bubbles racing across the skin of my hands and face.

•   •   •   •

I want to breathe, but where is the surface?

Don’t panic.

Somewhere above me is the parachute, square meters of canvas coming down on my head. Somewhere in the dark, guylines are sinking beneath the surface, tangling in an invisible web.

I pick a direction and swim. I pull hard at the water and kick—and learn something new. For all their amazing engineering, my robot feet are useless for swimming because they’re so well made they slice through the water without any significant resistance.

I kick anyway, I stroke, thinking of Harvey, lost over the side of the
Non-Negotiable
. Her rig pulled her down, but I know she didn’t panic. She would have kept her cool, tried to escape—she would have tried, but she never saw the surface again.

I don’t know if I’ve gone far enough to clear the chute, but I’ve gone as far as I can. I need the surface. So I swim up, up, up, empty lungs lined in fire, offering me no buoyancy. It’s all a struggle and for what?

To breathe again.

To breathe. That’s all that matters.

I’m going so fast when I reach the surface that I burst through to my waist, throwing off a spray of glittering foam.

•   •   •   •

There is a gibbous moon above me, a handful of bright stars, and the flashing lights of an airliner so far away its engine noise doesn’t reach me. Long swells roll past, lifting me up, ferrying me down, again and again. I breathe.

Breathe.

Embraced by a silence that is not silence because it’s broken by the blowing wind and the gurgle of water in my
ears as I float with only my face above the surface, all too conscious of the infinite deep below me.

There is no reason in the world I should be alive.

I watch the plane until it disappears.

A little longer.

•   •   •   •

Strange things happen on the edge of death. There are always stories.

My fingers have become wrinkled and numb, my ears are aching from the cold water, my eyes burning from the salt, and I think I’m owed something before I go. A ghost, a vision, here on the edge of death. Harvey, come to escort me to Valhalla. Or Lissa, come to show me the way to the Elysian fields. Hell, I’d be happy if Matt Ransom showed up, eager to haul me off to Heaven or Hell, I don’t give a shit which, just as long as something’s there.

They don’t come.

But why should they? I’m the one who got them killed.

There’s a faint flicker from the skullnet icon, the first I’ve noticed. Safe bet that I’ll be seeing a lot more of that. Wouldn’t want to remember my own death as a traumatic experience.

Fuck.

It’s too damn bad I don’t have a satellite uplink because I’ve got some hellacious good video recorded. I’d send it out into the world if I could.

Not that it matters.

A hundred years from now, no one will give a shit about anything I’ve ever done.

Hell,
one
year from now it’ll all be ancient history, with some new crisis on the stage.

The world goes on. Not one of us matters all that much. The dragons want to change that, they want to believe they matter.

Hell, we all do.

•   •   •   •

Far, far overhead, an airliner passes. My overlay wakes up, sensing a link to the Cloud. I watch the trembling of the network icon and my heart beats a little faster. But the connection is denied and then the plane is out of range.

I don’t need false hope. I don’t want it. If I’m going to die, let me die.

I’m cold and exhausted and I want to sleep.

I remember that the skullnet can help me with that.

Am I done then?

Maybe I am.

I’ve come back from the dead too many times.

I close my salt-swollen eyelids and, using my gaze, I work my way through the overlay’s menu tree. First, I shut down network access. No more false hope for me.

Next, sleep.

A word, a thought. That’s all it will take.

•   •   •   •

I don’t do it.

Why chase death? It’ll get here soon enough.

•   •   •   •

I hear things: the wind, my heartbeat, fish jumping, the gurgle of water in my ears, a low bass thrumming. I stir, open my eyes, lift my head from the water—and I can’t hear the low noise anymore. So I let the water fill my ears again and there it is, the rumble of a distant engine.

No false hope. That’s all I ask.

I tread water to keep my head above the surface so I don’t have to hear it.

A swell rolls under me, raising me up. As I pass over its crest, motion draws my gaze. Motion far above the ceaseless
motion of the waves. A shadow, a shape, moving in the moon-washed sky. It’s high, thirty degrees below the zenith. It’s not an airliner; it has no lights. I can see it only because moonlight falls gray against its delta wing as it transits swiftly, silently, between horizons.

It’s a surveillance drone—a larger, faster, higher-flying aircraft than the angel we used in the LCS.

Why?

Why is it here? If the navy has come to look for the fallen nuke, they should have come with a submarine. A drone won’t help them.

Why is it flying so low that I can see it?

I blink against the salt, watching it, until after several seconds it disappears in the distance, leaving me alone again at the empty center of nowhere.

Maybe it will come back.

Doesn’t matter.

With only my head above the water I am a speck, a mote in the wave-tossed, glittering vast night, my body as cold as the ocean that cradles me. Even an AI couldn’t pick me out against the background noise.

No false hope.

I close my eyes again, so all that’s left for me to look at are the icons on my overlay. My gaze settles on the red X, the icon of network isolation, all connections denied. A menu pops out, offering me options. I look away.

In an irritated voice, Lissa says, “Turn it back on, dickhead.”

Holy shit. The ghosts are speaking at last.

“Lissa?” I ask in a hoarse whisper, knowing her voice was a hallucination, knowing she’s not really here, but I want to play the game. “Baby?”

No answer. But out of habit I do as she says. I gaze at the icon again, the menu pops out, and I turn my network access back on.

Right away I get a connection. It comes up as a closed network, no Cloud access, but there’s someone on the other side who knows me, because within seconds I get a text. I don’t recognize the source, but it’s got my passcode appended, so it gets through:
Reply with your GPS coordinates.

Jaynie thinks I want to die, but I get to prove her wrong again. I don’t know who it is out there hunting me, but I dump my location data into a text and I fucking send it.

SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTATION

EXIT INTERVIEW

L
OOMING ABOVE ME, SILHOUETTED AGAINST
the moon-washed sky, is the tall, sharp-edged superstructure of an old-style navy ship, maybe a destroyer. No lights showing, so I can’t see the flag. No sound but the wind and the idling engines.

I want to shout, cry out for help, make my presence known, but something tells me not to. I’ve got a feeling— a strong feeling—that this operation calls for silence. So I tread water, watching the ship as the long swells roll beneath me.

Three minutes and thirty-two seconds slide past on my time display. I hear a quick intake of breath. Turning my head, I see a swimmer treading water less than a meter away. Moonlight reflects off the facets of his face mask. He speaks in a soft voice that identifies him as American: “We’re on the same side, okay?”

I wonder what side that is, but I don’t ask or argue. I’m okay with it. Everything feels right.

“Quick and quiet,” he says, moving closer.

His life vest inflates as he wraps his arms around me and then we’re moving, a little wake burbling around us
as we’re dragged through the water. We submerge twice as swells roll over us and then we’re at the ship’s side. A basket is waiting.

I know the air can’t be as cold as it feels, but in the few seconds it takes to haul us up, I start shivering. I can’t make it stop.

The deck is empty except for one man who grips my arm and gets me up before I have time to doubt my ability to stand. He steers me through a doorway into a narrow, air-conditioned passage lit by dull red lights. It’s fucking cold.

“Got to move fast,” my escort murmurs under his breath. He’s a bigger man than me—broad shouldered, dark skinned, dark haired. Polynesian, maybe, with his wide, powerful face. He’s dressed in a black long-sleeved pullover with no name tag, and dark cargo pants that might be part of a navy uniform but it’s hard to tell in the vague light. There’s a glint along the curve of his jaw that looks to me like the tattooed antenna of an overlay.

I hear the swimmer behind us. “Not a mistake, Kanoa,” he says in a soft but triumphant voice. “
And
we beat the satellite. Twelve seconds to spare.”

“Shut up,” Kanoa advises him. “We are not secure.”

It’s all I can do to stay on my feet as we move swiftly through dark passages. We reach a closed hatch. Kanoa holds his wrist to a sensor plate until an electronic lock clicks, and then he pulls the hatch open.

More dim red lights are on the other side, illuminating shared quarters with four bunks stacked floor to ceiling and a plastic table with side benches bolted to the floor. We enter. The swimmer comes in behind us. When he closes the door, the lock clicks and buzzes. “All secure,” he announces as bright white lights come on.

Kanoa steers me past the benches and bunks and into a shower cubicle.

“Get the wet stuff off,” he orders as he turns a spray of lukewarm water on me.

I’m allowed a minute to rinse the salt off. Then I clear out so the swimmer—his name is Griffin—can have a turn. It’s the first time I get a good look at him. He’s a skinny guy, Caucasian with narrow features, light-colored hair shaved to a stubble. Because I’m looking for it, I see the gold tattoo of an antenna on the back of his jawline.

Still shivering, I get dressed in the clothes Kanoa hands me. They’re a duplicate of what he’s wearing: blue-gray trousers and a black pullover.

Hot coffee waits on the table. I sit at one of the benches, wrapped in a blanket, struggling to keep my hands steady so the coffee doesn’t spill. When I try to speak, my throat is so swollen all I can manage is a hoarse whisper as I state the obvious: “You two aren’t regular navy.”

Kanoa refills my cup. He sits opposite me, his dark eyes locked on mine. “We’re like you—professional soldiers wired with a skullnet and overlay, who work for the Red.”

It’s a jolt to hear it put that bluntly, but FaceValue affirms he’s telling the truth—at least as he sees it.

“Like you, we get assigned to address potential existential threats. Make sure no rogue operator has a chance to do what Thelma Sheridan did on Coma Day. It’s a covert war, just beginning. Black Cross, First Light, Silent Firebreak, Vertigo Gate—”

“You know about Vertigo Gate?”

“Those missions were some of the early skirmishes. There have been other engagements, ones you’ve never heard of. And there will be more. You need to decide if you still want to be part of it.”

I lean forward, fired by the memory of this world as I saw it from orbit, this beautiful, fragile, irreplaceable planet that is our home. “Of course I want to be part of it.”

Griffin, dressed just like us now, sits beside Kanoa. They trade a long look. I’ve got a feeling there’s a conversation playing out, thoughts picked up by their skullnets, translated and then transmitted between them as words, but I can’t hear any of it because I’m not linked into their network.

After several seconds, Kanoa nods. He looks across the table at me. “You can go home if you want to. But when Susan Monteiro is sworn in as president, she
will
shut down Cryptic Arrow.”

No need to ask how he knows about Cryptic Arrow. He already told me he works for the Red.

Griffin wants to make sure I understand: “If you go home, Shelley, you’ll find yourself retired.”

Kanoa isn’t wearing any rank insignia, but it’s clear he’s the commanding officer of this outfit, so I direct my question to him. “And if I don’t go home?”

“I’m recruiting.”

•   •   •   •

The few who know of Vertigo Gate consider the mission a success, despite the losses. Eduard Semak’s cache of rogue nuclear weapons has been secured and the B
61
nuclear warhead he kept in orbit is no longer a hazard. It was recovered from the seafloor by a US Navy submarine and is scheduled to be decommissioned.

Semak himself did not survive reentry while certain anonymous funds, in the approximate amount of $
2
.
5
billion, were successfully transferred to new owners.

The tragedy of the mission came in the loss of
Lotus
pilot Ulyana Kurnakova and her technician. Despite an extensive search of surface waters, their bodies were never recovered.

I won’t be stepping forward to correct the record.

Guilt cuts when I think of Delphi, but it’s better this way. She’s been through enough trials, she’s seen me die too many times. I won’t put her through that again—and it will happen again.

This isn’t over.