Outriders (2 page)

The Process.

That’s what his instructors had called it. Cadre Sahil had said it was
almost
the final test in Selection, and was the worst because it was the only one you couldn’t prepare for. You either had it or you didn’t. He hadn’t specified what that
it
was, exactly, but Lincoln had the feeling that was just part of cadre’s game. Cadre Sahil had just casually dropped that little nugget and then changed the subject, knowing full well that the candidates’ minds would latch on to it and run wild imagining the worst possibilities.

Getting through Selection was mostly a mental game, and cadre loved to play it. It could seem almost like torture at times, but it was a mercy, really. If cadre could get in your head and make you quit, that spared you a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering in the short term, and saved a lot of other good lives in the long term. As rough as training could be, Lincoln knew from experience that “training cold” was never as cold as “real-world ops cold,” and the highest-risk exercises were only about half as risky as the real deal. If training could break you, then the real world would destroy you, and in the small, special units that Lincoln served in, one person coming apart on mission was likely to take a bunch of friends down with him. Better to weed those folks out early, help them find a better fit.

It wasn’t a failure, not really. This was the third special operations unit that Lincoln had volunteered for, and he’d been accepted on both of his previous attempts. He knew from experience that he wasn’t fundamentally
better
than any of those candidates that had bowed out of Selection along the way, either this time or any of the times before. He wasn’t even sure that he
wanted
it more than any of those other men and women. Lincoln just wasn’t very good at quitting, and he’d served enough to know that his body was a lot more resilient than it would ever admit. And nobody had been able to kill him yet.

Well. Except the one time. The Process he’d just gone through was a thoroughly controlled affair, but for all intents and purposes he’d volunteered to let his country kill him and then bring him back to life. Death-proofing, somebody had called it. Seemed about right. Once you’d experienced the sensation and come back from it, the theory went, it made it easier to ignore the survival instinct-driven fear and just focus on getting the job done. Funny, they’d told him something similar about drowning when he’d gone through the underwater operations training course and they’d sent him twenty feet down with his arms and legs bound. It’s not the water that kills you, it’s the panic that robs you of your ability to clearly define the problem and find the solution. Ignore the fact that your lungs are filling up with liquid, and those extra seconds just might be what you need to get back home. Probably not a perfect analogy where literal death was concerned, but after everything he’d just been through it was the best his brain could do.

Lincoln didn’t try to understand all the ins and outs of the procedure, but he knew the basics. Brain on backup. Some team of two hundred-pound heads had figured out how to map an entire consciousness, keep it in storage, and then reintegrate it back with the body. Theoretically, if Lincoln’s body suffered catastrophic damage, it was possible to offload his… what? Soul, he guessed, until the doctors could get all his pieces put back together. Once he was all Frankensteined up,
zrooop
they put his soul back in, and the army got to count one less KIA. Theoretically.

People had a lot of theories.

Zrooop.
That’s the noise Lincoln imagined the Process made when his consciousness got stuffed back into its original organic housing. He didn’t know why. It just seemed like a
zrooop
kind of procedure to him.

Apparently it was mindnumbingly expensive to run the program, which was one reason that not everyone in uniform rated the treatment. The other reason was that the whole thing was about forty different kinds of Ultra Secret. He’d had to sign about a thousand pages’ worth of waivers and releases before he’d been allowed just to try to
qualify
for Selection. After qualification, he’d signed a whole truckload more. By that point, he’d pretty much given up reading them, so he wasn’t even sure whether or not his own body was technically his property, or that of the US Government. He couldn’t recall all the particulars, but he was pretty sure if he ever mentioned even the
acronym
of the codename of the facility where the Process had been developed, his existence would be formally and utterly erased. And given what he’d seen in his time amongst these people, he had very little doubt that getting erased was way worse than death.

Still. He’d done it. He’d volunteered, managed to stay in the Selection program long enough to reach the critical moment, and then when the time came, he’d given his life for his country. And they’d been kind enough to give it back.

Lincoln closed his eyes and tried not to think about it too much. Nineteen minutes later a man opened the door and walked into the room, and then knocked after he’d already let himself in. Lincoln looked up to find one of his instructors, Cadre Sahil, staring back at him. Early, of course. And of course it had to be Cadre Sahil. Lincoln still hadn’t been able to figure out if he’d done something to make the man hate him, or if the instructor just thrived on the suffering of others, but no one had driven him harder or been more vocal about his disappointing performance than Cadre Sahil.

“Hey OneSev,” Cadre Sahil said, swallowing the last syllable as he always did. “You ready to roll?”

“Don’t know,” Lincoln said, sitting up. “The nice doctor said I got thirty minutes.”

“That’s regular people time. You ain’t regular people, are ya?”

“No, cadre.”

“That’s right.”

Lincoln waited a couple of seconds to see if his instructor was going to say anything else. Cadre Sahil’s expression didn’t change, and he didn’t seem likely to continue any further conversation.

“Well all right then,” Lincoln said.

Cadre Sahil dipped his head in a half nod. Lincoln swung his legs over the edge of the bed and eased himself to his feet, taking it slow just to be safe. Every muscle was sore and fatigued, but that was normal these days. As far as he could tell, he was as fit as he ever was. He walked over and stood in front of Cadre Sahil. Practically towered over him. Lincoln was just a hair under six feet tall with his boots on, if he stood up as straight as he could; Cadre Sahil was maybe five-foot four. But by Lincoln’s estimate, Cadre Sahil was about twice as wide in the chest and arms, and ten times harder than steel.

“Let’s roll,” Lincoln said. Cadre Sahil stepped to one side and gestured for Lincoln to head out. The corridor was empty, lit only slightly more than the room had been, and just as beige. It was like they’d built the whole place to blend into itself. Easier to be forgotten that way, maybe. Cadre Sahil followed him out and then overtook him to lead the way; he didn’t seem to have any problem knowing which corridors to take. He always walked with a forward lean, chin down, long strides, like he was headed to break up a fight. Or maybe to start one. In the past fourteen weeks, Lincoln couldn’t remember having ever seen anyone, regardless of age, rank, or size, who hadn’t gotten out of the way when Cadre Sahil was coming through. They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, until Lincoln broke it.

“So what’s next on the agenda, cadre?” Lincoln asked, as they walked out of the medical wing, or wherever it was they were.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” the instructor replied.

“Can’t hurt to ask.”

Cadre Sahil grunted his version of a chuckle. “Thought you woulda figured out by now
that
ain’t true.”

They continued down another corridor, this one a darker shade of beige. Lincoln might even dare to call it
mocha.

“Couple folks gonna ask you a couple questions,” the instructor added without looking at him. “Then we’ll see what we see.”

A minute later, Cadre Sahil took a right turn down another plain-looking hall, with six plain-looking doors. Scratch that. Five plain-looking doors. One had what looked like the remnants of a piece of red tape stuck on it. Lincoln smiled to himself at that; it seemed somehow appropriate that the only bit of decoration he’d seen in the military hospital was red tape.

They ended up at the last door at the end of the hall. One of the plain ones.

“This is it,” Cadre Sahil said. He stopped and turned to face Lincoln. For a moment, the instructor stood there working his jaw, like he was about to say something. But he just shook his head to himself.

“Well,” Lincoln said. “Thanks for the escort, cadre. I appreciate you not making me do any pushups along the way.”

“Still got time,” Cadre Sahil said, and one corner of his mouth pulled down into his version of a smile. But then he stepped back from the door and gestured for Lincoln to pass through.

“You’re not coming in?” Lincoln asked. Cadre Sahil shook his head. And something in the man’s usually unreadable eyes betrayed the gravity of the moment. This really was
it.
The final stage of Selection. Lincoln’s heart rate kicked up a few beats per minute. “Well,” he said. “All right.” Cadre Sahil gave a quick nod; part good luck, part goodbye.

Lincoln returned the gesture, took a deep breath, and reached to open the door.

“Hey,” Cadre Sahil said. Lincoln glanced back at him. “You done good, OneSev. Whatever happens from here out, it don’t mean nothin’ about the kinda man you are. That’s settled business. Ain’t many alive could do what you done. Don’t let ’em take that from you.” He paused, and then a moment later, added, with some significance, “I’d serve under you in a heartbeat.”

Lincoln didn’t know what else to do in the face of such a rare and shocking show of emotion from the man, so he just nodded and offered his hand for a shake. Cadre Sahil flicked his eyes down at Lincoln’s outstretched hand, and then cracked a thin smile.

“Next time I see you, I’m gonna have to salute,” he said.

“We’ll both know it’s just for show, cadre,” Lincoln said.

“Nah,” Cadre Sahil said, taking crushing hold of Lincoln’s offered hand. “You’re one of the good ones, no doubt.”

“Be well,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah.”

The two men lingered one final moment, and in that wordless moment, some steel passed from instructor to student, a sensation Lincoln had experienced only once before when he’d earned his first special operations tab. Then Lincoln turned and walked through the door to face down whatever fresh, final hell awaited.

TWO

T
HE MAN CODENAMED
Vector curled the pinkie of his left hand into his upper palm, applied gentle pressure to the implanted dermal pad hidden there to open a channel to his handler.

“Cisko, this is Vector,” he whispered, his words barely more than an exhale. Even after all these years and more than a few attempted explanations, he still didn’t know exactly how it worked; however, long experience had taught him that the nearly microscopic network tattooed on his larynx would transmit the words with crystal clarity, no matter how quietly he spoke.

He held still, keeping the two men across the courtyard in his peripheral, waited six seconds for the response. The bare hint of a click sounded in his ear, subtle confirmation that encryption had been established now on both ends of the conversation.

“Cisko copies, Vector,” a woman answered. Not
the
woman, but someone close to her. “I have you secure.”

The signal in his ear chirped once. “Vector confirms secure.”

“Go ahead.”

“Target is on site.”

“You have positive visual?”

“That’s affirmative. Looking at him right now.”

“Opportunity?” she asked.

Vector restrained the reflexive impulse to flick his eyes at the two men he’d identified as security officers.

“Security’s light. Cover’s good. Best chance we’ve had yet. I’d like to take it.”

“Your team is in place?”

“Of course.”

“Stand by.”

“Vector, standing by,” he said, and then relaxed his hand, releasing the pad. The two men across the courtyard moved to a table under the awning and sat down in low wicker chairs. One of them was heavyset, sweaty, sloppily dressed in cheap knock-off clothes patterned after the most expensive brands. Fairly typical low-rent thug pretending to be a respectable, important thug. The other man was almost the exact opposite: small-framed, quiet in his movements, easy to overlook. He was the dangerous one. And also Vector’s true target. For the moment, the Target was intent on whatever he was viewing on his holoscreen, temporarily oblivious to his surroundings. Surprisingly out of character, given what Vector knew about the man, but it was better for Vector that way. Better for the job, anyway.

Vector.
He shook his head at the codename, sipped his room-temperature, weak coffee. Tomorrow he would be someone else. Warble, maybe, or something even more ridiculous. He was pretty sure the Woman picked names for him that she knew he would hate having to say over comms. Her way of reminding him who he worked for, or more likely of gently mocking who he
used
to work for. For all her intensity, she did have a playful side that she wasn’t afraid to let out once in a while. She had many names of her own, though he didn’t know if any of them were real. He and his team had just taken to calling her “the Woman” so they all knew who they were talking about.

He leaned back in his chair, scratched his belly, scoped out the immediate area for the thousandth time. Half a dry pastry sat on the chipped plate in front of him next to his cup of terrible coffee. Twenty-two days he’d been here in Elliston now. Martian days, anyway. Vector couldn’t remember the exact conversion to Earth time offhand. Not quite the same, but close enough that he didn’t mind the difference too much. Not after three weeks. Three weeks of integrating himself into the community; getting the lay of the land, establishing a routine, becoming part of the background. Three weeks of terrible coffee and dry pastries on chipped plates.