Going Dark (4 page)

If we still had angel sight, we could see them coming.

We don’t.

•  •  •  •

A knob of ice explodes in front of me. Out of instinct I dive sideways, land on my arm strut, and roll, trying to make sense of an ominous blur of red and yellow icons flaring in my visor’s display. I come up on my belly to a fusillade of automatic-weapons fire, each shot a sharp, hard crack against the suppressed audio of the roaring gale. I squint at the squad icons, but they’re faded, translucent, hard to see—because our battle AI wants me to focus on the firefight—but I can see enough to know that we have wounded, with one critical red.

“Kanoa, injury report!” I could pull up the data, but it’s faster to ask.

“Julian’s down and critical. Dunahee and Fadul are mobile wounded.”

“Estimate of enemy numbers?”

“At least six on the ice.”

I look around. A meter away, there’s a low ridge. It’s only eighteen inches high and not thick enough to stop a round, but it offers line-of-sight cover and that’s better than nothing. I belly-crawl to it, turn onto my back, and then poke the muzzle of my HITR over the top, using the muzzle cams to look around.

I can’t see much, because the iceberg is only thirty meters away and it’s blocking my view of the platform.

Frustration kicks in. I am fucking blind. I have no visual contact with the enemy, with the target, or with my own soldiers. If Delphi was still my handler, she would know what I need. She would have already expanded the map and given me a verbal summary of everyone’s position—but I left Delphi behind. I left everything.

Map!
I think—and if a thought can have a bitter tone, this one does.

The AI picks it up anyway and expands the map. It shows my location still a half-klick north of
Sigil
. Fadul is farthest out on my east. Escamilla is with Julian, getting him stabilized. Roman is behind me, but moving up fast. Everyone else is spread out to the west. Logan and Tran are in a firefight with at least three enemy soldiers. Three more enemy positions on the eastern side of the platform are marked with fuzzy icons to indicate uncertainty.

“Kanoa, do I have a target?”

“Negative. No line of sight and out of range for grenades. You have to move in.”

“Roman, come behind me!”

“Roger that.”

I want the high ground, so I sprint for the iceberg. The map shows it as twenty meters long, four wide, angled from northeast to southwest. Smooth, open ice lies beyond it.

I loop my HITR over my shoulder and skip-jump, using all the power of my leg struts to launch myself at the top of the wall.

I don’t make it to the top—but I get close.

I jam my arm hooks in and try to get a toehold using the teeth of my footplates—but the ice is so goddamned hard, I barely nick it.

Roman is right behind me. She gets under me, gets her arm struts under my footplates. “Got you, Shelley! Now go, go,
go
.”

I’m levitating, enough to get my arm hooks over the top, and then my elbows. After that, it’s easy to scramble onto the slanting, wind-swept surface.

I look around, realizing what an exposed position I’m in, no cover at all, but what the fuck. I can see everything on this side of the platform.

HITR in hand, I belly-crawl to the south edge. Check the map again. But I still don’t have a target. The smooth ice between me and
Sigil
is patterned in geometric panes of light and shadow cast by the glittering superstructure rising against the night sky just half a klick away.

“Kanoa—”

A gold targeting point pops up on my display. I can’t see anything in the indicated position. “You’re close enough,” Kanoa says. “Lob a grenade.”

There are two triggers on my weapon. I curl my finger around the second one, the one that controls the grenade launcher while I correct my aim, bringing a targeting circle into line with the target point. I squeeze the trigger, launching a grenade from the tube mounted under the rifle barrel.

The firefight to my east heats up, shots popping off one after another as the grenade rockets away. It explodes with a flash that dims my visor and tosses up a spray of ice crystals that briefly map the wind’s fierce currents as they’re whipped away. No fucking idea if I hit the enemy. Kanoa puts up another target point. I cover it and shoot again.

This time, when the wind carries away the cloud of smoke and ice splinters, I see a body wearing white camo and a dead sister, just like the soldier Roman dropped.

I glance at the map. “You got another target for me?”

“Roman, cover it!” Kanoa barks.

Bam!
My vision goes bright white as something kicks me in the side of my helmet, hard enough that despite the weight of my pack and my rig, I go briefly airborne,
dropping back a second later to land on my side. I want to curl up to reduce my exposure. I want to crawl for shelter—but I know I’ll be dead if I do.
“Target,”
I growl at Kanoa. The only chance I have is to lay down enough return fire to keep the shooter from shooting me again.

I roll back to my belly, returning to shooting position—but I’m not fast enough. A rifle speaks, fiercely loud even muffled by my helmet. Three slow shots. To my astonishment, none of them hit me.

“Target!” I scream at Kanoa.

“Negative. Nothing left. Roman’s cleared the eastern field.”

I shift focus from my visor’s display to the wider terrain. Roman is standing below on the ice, looking up at me as she cradles her HITR in her arms. The three shots I heard were hers. “Your head okay, Shelley?” she asks.

Fuck if I know.

I check the map. It’s been updated with the locations of four bodies, three of them on the eastern side of the platform, one to the west where Logan and Tran are still dueling with two live mercs. I want to get over there, help them finish things, but not until this side is fully secure. “Roman, I need you to make sure those dead mercs don’t do a zombie. Fadul—”

Boom!

I look up, startled by the sound of an explosion on the platform. The distant bleat of a fire alarm follows. The alarm and the muted roar of the wind are the only sounds I hear, because the shooting to the west has stopped.

I scan the squad icons—no changes. No one else is hit. “Logan—”

I want to ask him for his status, but a new sound intrudes: one of the surviving mercs, shouting, pleading for backup. My helmet audio boosts the volume of his panicked voice
so that each word is clear: “Glover! Glover, where the fuck are you? Get out here! Get out here or we’re dead!”

Vincent Glover.
It’s a name familiar from the mission briefing. “Glover’s the CO,” I remind the squad. “Watch for movement on the platform, because he’s going to be bringing out the big guns.”

“Don’t think so,” Fadul counters. “Looks like we got no heroes on deck today. Motherfuckers are rolling back the canvas hangar on the landing pad. They’re bugging out.”

I can’t see the landing pad from my position. It’s hidden behind the platform’s massive superstructure. But Fadul is wide east. I look through her helmet cam to see the wind tent sliding open on motorized tracks, folds of loose canvas shivering in the gale as the hemispherical struts collapse on each other. The tent’s retreat reveals a midsize civilian helicopter that my overlay identifies as an Agusta Westland. The blades are loose and starting to spin up.

“It’s not just the pilot pulling out,” Fadul says. “I make out at least one, maybe two in the backseat. Fucking Vincent Glover is abandoning his soldiers.”

I can hardly believe it. Mercenaries work for the money, but they’re still loyal to one another—or I used to think so. But I abandon the question of mercenary ethics when my skullnet icon lights up, indicating sudden and significant interference in my headspace. Not that I need the hint. An awareness comes over me, a certainty that I need to prevent that helicopter from leaving. I don’t want to destroy it, but I need to know what’s on board.

“Fadul, can you hit the pilot?”

“Pilot’s a civilian,” Kanoa reminds me. “Passengers might be civilians too.”

“Out of my range anyway,” Fadul adds. “And I’d be shooting across the wind.”

I’m closer than Fadul, I’d be shooting down the wind, and it doesn’t matter if I can’t see the helicopter now, because I’ll be able to see it when it takes off. “Cover me, Roman.” She’s a better shooter than I am, but I have the high ground. “I am not letting that helicopter go.”

I stand up on the iceberg, brace my feet against the blast of the wind, and bring my weapon to my shoulder.

“You operating, Shelley?” Kanoa wants to know.

“Roger that.”

Operating
.
That’s what we call it when the Red gets inside our heads, pushing its agenda so we feel it, so we know what needs to be done. The skullnet icon is glowing and I have no doubt at all that I am operating on a program written by the Red.

“More figures on the landing pad,” Fadul reports as the volume of engine noise climbs. And then her tone shifts.
“Incoming!”

I don’t flinch, even when an RPG explodes to the east, a last rogue shot as the helicopter goes airborne. I see the blur of its rotors through the platform’s superstructure. Confidence floods me. I know I’ll be able to hit it.

I wait for a better angle. Two seconds, three, the wind steady against me. I think the pilot wants to stay low, keep the platform behind him, but the wind catches his ship, lofts it up. A targeting point pops up in my field of view, sighted on the engine block. I fire a three-round burst.

And I hit it.

I know I do.

But nothing happens. Tracking its flight with the muzzle of my weapon, I shoot three more bursts—but the helicopter keeps going, accelerating southeast across the wind like it’s heading for Greenland.

“Nice shooting, sir,” Roman says.

She’s fucking with me. I expect that from Fadul, but not
from Roman. I scowl down at her—but then I remember the RPG. “Fadul! Status?”

I check her icon—it’s gone yellow—but Fadul sounds fine when she says, “Motherfucker missed me.”

I look again at Roman. She’s standing with her head cocked, watching the retreating helicopter. “The wind’s pulling a streamer of black smoke out of the engine block,” she reports. “I don’t think they’re getting far.”

My skullnet icon fades from sight. The unearthly confidence I felt goes with it and I’m suddenly conscious of my exposed position atop the highest point anywhere on this ice field.
“Jesus,”
I whisper, looking up warily at
Sigil
’s decks.

Kanoa knows exactly what I’m thinking. “No activity on the platform,” he assures me. “And Logan’s got an offer of surrender from the two remaining enemy on the ice—though you might want to move to a less exposed position anyway.”

“Yeah.”

I jump down, managing not to land on my ass, but my hands are shaking—and not from the cold. The Red wanted me to take that shot, wanted it enough to risk making me an easy target. I’d like to believe it ran a calculation first, that it plotted the positions and status of every enemy soldier remaining and determined my exposure was minimal—but I don’t believe it.

The Red wanted me to take that shot. That was the priority.

•  •  •  •

I head toward Logan’s position, checking in with my wounded on the way.

“Fadul, you sound functional but you’re showing yellow. What’s your status?”

“Fucking ice splinter went through my left bicep. But I can walk and I can shoot.”

“Roger that. Dunahee, you?”

“Shoulder’s broken,” he whispers between clenched teeth. “I can walk.”

Julian is not ambulatory. He’s got a hole blasted in his gut. Escamilla has stuffed the wound with putty and stopped the bleeding, but it’s a bad wound, he’s losing heat fast, and we need to evacuate him ASAP.

I don’t know yet how we’re going to do that. This mission now qualifies as thoroughly fucked, and if we’re going to unfuck it, we have to move fast. Both logic and instinct tell me that whatever it is we’re looking for, it left on the bird—and I’m going to believe that Roman is right. Damaged and fighting the storm, the helicopter won’t be able to stay in the air for more than a few minutes. So we need to go after it. We need to reach it as soon as we can after it goes down—but with three wounded soldiers, two prisoners, and an oil-drilling platform that still needs to be inspected, it’s going to be some time before we can leave.

“Fadul, I know you’re hurting, but I need you to help Escamilla get Julian to the platform.”

“Shelley,” she points out, “we don’t control the platform.”

“We will by the time you get there.”

•  •  •  •

Prisoners are a burden and now we’ve got two.

Logan has got them stripped of their gear. Tossed alongside their neatly folded exoskeletons is a collection of pistols, knives, Tasers, communications gear, and night vision goggles. They’re kneeling on the ice, still wearing their white parkas. Their thermal hoods, like ours, hide their faces. One’s a big man, his skin black behind the frost collected on his lips and eyelashes. The other has a slight build; the skin around his eyes is pale.

I turn the anonymous dark shield of my visor on them and ask, “Who’s left aboard
Sigil
?”

“Just the civilians,” the big guy says. He’s so cold, his teeth are actually chattering. “We were hired to protect the civilians. But Glover ran out on us! Took Morris and Chan with him. Left us here to die.”

Working off of voice and biometrics, the battle AI tags him with an identity:
Darian Wilcox, 26, former US Army.

“What were the civilians up to, Wilcox?”

He cocks his head, eyeing me for a few seconds, like he thinks I should already know this. “Lab work, sir. That’s all I know. Important enough to bring us in. Important enough for someone to hire you.”

“How many civilians?”

“Twelve.”

The number confirms our background intelligence.

Wilcox adds, “None of them are going to put up a fight, sir. You can take what you need. No need to hurt anyone.”

“Nice and friendly?”