“In your own words, Sergeant. Take your time.”
We killed children. We killed children, and we lost Silano, and I don’t know why. And I don’t know if you do either.
But of course, that would involve taking Major Emma Rossiter at her word.
“Did the child … ?” Metzinger had already tubed Garin’s prize by the time Asante reboarded the sub. Garin, of course, had no idea what his body had been doing. Metzinger had not encouraged discussion.
That was okay. Nobody was really in the mood anyhow.
“I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.” Rossiter waits for what she probably regards as a respectful moment. “If we could focus on the subject at hand …”
“It was a shitstorm,” Asante says. “Sir.”
“We gathered that.” The Major musters a sympathetic smile. “We were hoping you could provide more in the way of details.”
“You must have the logs.”
“Those are numbers, Sergeant. Pixels. You are uniquely—if accidentally— in a position to give us more than that.”
“I never even got below decks.”
Rossiter seems to relax a little. “Still. This is the first time one of you has been debooted in mid-game, and it’s obviously not the kind of thing we want to risk repeating. Maddox is already working on ways to make the toggle more robust. In the meantime, your perspective could be useful in helping to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
“My perspective, sir, is that those forces did not warrant our particular skill set.”
“We’re more interested in your experiences regarding the deboot, Sergeant. Was there a sense of disorientation, for example? Any visual artifacts in BUD?”
Asante stands with his hands behind his back—good gripping bad—and says nothing.
“Very well.” Rossiter’s smile turns grim. “Let’s talk about your perspective, then. Do you think regular forces would have been sufficient? Do you have a sense of the potential losses incurred if we’d sent, say, WestHem marines?”
“They appeared to be refugees, sir. They didn’t pose—”
“One hundred percent, Sergeant. We would have lost everyone.”
Asante says nothing.
“Unaugged soldiers wouldn’t even have made it off the gyland before it went up. Even if they had, the p-wave would’ve been fatal if you hadn’t greatly increased your rate of descent. Do you think regular forces would have made that call? Seen what was coming, run the numbers, improvised a strategy to get below the kill zone in less time than it would take to shout a command?”
“We killed children.” It’s barely more than a whisper.
“Collateral damage is an unfortunate but inevitable—”
“We targeted children.”
“Ah.”
Rossiter plays with her tacpad: tap tap tap, swipe.
“These children,” she says at last. “Were they armed?”
“I do not believe so, sir.”
“Were they naked?”
“Sir?”
“Could you be certain they weren’t carrying concealed weapons? Maybe even a remote trigger for a thousand kilograms of CL-20?”
“They were … sir, they couldn’t have been more than seven or eight.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you about child soldiers, Sergeant. They’ve been a fact of life for centuries, especially in your particular—at any rate. Just out of interest, how young would someone have to be before you’d rule them out as a potential threat?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Yes you do. You did. That’s why you targeted them.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Of course. It was your … evil twin. That’s what you call it, right?” Rossiter leans forward. “Listen to me very carefully, Sergeant Asante, because I think you’re laboring under some serious misapprehensions about what we do here. Your twin is not evil, and it is not gratuitous. It is you: a much bigger part of you than the whiny bitch standing in front of me right now.”
Asante clenches his teeth and keeps his mouth shut.
“This gut feeling giving you so much trouble. This sense of Right and Wrong. Where do you think it comes from, Sergeant?”
“Experience. Sir.”
“It’s the result of a calculation. A whole series of calculations, far too complex to fit into the conscious workspace. So the subconscious sends you … an executive summary, you might call it. Your evil twin knows all about your sense of moral outrage; it’s the source of it. It has more information than you do. Processes it more effectively. Maybe you should trust it to know what it’s doing.”
He doesn’t. He doesn’t trust her, either.
But suddenly, surprisingly, he understands her.
She’s not just making a point. This isn’t just rhetoric. The insight appears fully formed in his mind, a bright shard of unexpected clarity. She thought it would be easy. She really doesn’t know what happened.
He watches her fingers move on the ‘pad as she speaks. Notes the nervous flicker of her tongue at the corner of her mouth. She glances up to meet his eye, glances away again.
She’s scared.
Look Back in Anger
Asante awakens standing in the meadow up the mountain. The sky is cloudless and full of stars. His fatigues are damp with sweat or dew. There is no moon. Black conifers loom on all sides. To the east, a hint of pre-dawn orange seeps through the branches.
He has read that this was once the time of the dawn chorus, when songbirds would call out in ragged symphony to start the day. He has never heard it. He doesn’t hear it now. There’s no sound in this forest but his own breathing—
—and the snap of a twig under someone’s foot.
He turns. A gray shape detaches itself from the darkness.
“Fellow corpse,” Tiwana says.
“Fellow corpse,” he responds.
“You wandered off. Thought I’d tag along. Make sure you didn’t go AWOL.”
“I think ET’s acting up again.”
“Maybe you’re just sleepwalking. People sleepwalk sometimes.” She shrugs. “Probably the same wiring anyway.” “Sleepwalkers don’t kill people.” “Actually, that’s been known to happen.” He clears his throat. “Did, um …” “No one else knows you’re up here.” “Did ET disable the pickups?”
“I did.”
“Thanks.”
“Any time.”
Asante looks around. “I remember the first time I saw this place. It was … magical.”
“I was thinking more ironic.” Adding, at Asante’s look: “You know. That one of the last pristine spots in this whole shit-show owes its existence to the fact that WestHem needs someplace private to teach us how to blow shit up.”
“Count on you,” Asante
