War Stories: New Military Science Fiction

In the Loop ^{Ken Liu}

WHEN KYRA WAS NINE, HER father turned into a monster.

It didn’t happen overnight. He went to work every morning, like always, and when he came in the door in the evening, Kyra would ask him to play catch with her. That used to be her favorite time of the day. But the yesses came less frequently, and then not at all.

He’d sit at the table and stare. She’d ask him questions and he wouldn’t answer. He used to always have a funny answer for everything, and she’d repeat his jokes to her friends and think he was the cleverest dad in the whole world.

She had loved those moments when he’d teach her how to swing a hammer properly, how to measure and saw and chisel. She would tell him that she wanted to be a builder when she grew up, and he’d nod and say that was a good idea. But he stopped taking her to his workshop in the shed to make things together, and there was no explanation.

Then he started going out in the evenings. At first, Mom would ask him when he’d be back. He’d look at her like she was a stranger before closing the door behind him. By the time he came home, Kyra and her brothers were already in bed, but she would hear shouts and sometimes things breaking.

Mom began to look at Dad like she was afraid of him, and Kyra tried to help with getting the boys to bed, to make her bed without being asked, to finish her dinner without complaint, to do everything perfectly, hoping that would make things better, back to the way they used to be. But Dad didn’t seem to pay any attention to her or her brothers.

Then, one day, he slammed Mom into the wall. Kyra stood there in the kitchen and felt the whole house shake. She didn’t know what to do. He turned around and saw Kyra, and his face scrunched up like he hated her, hated her mother, hated himself most of all. And he fled the house without saying another thing.

Mom packed a suitcase and took Kyra and her brothers to Grandma’s place that evening, and they stayed there for a month. Kyra thought about calling her father but she didn’t know what she would say. She tried to imagine herself asking the man on the other end of the line what have you done with Daddy?

A policeman came, looking for her mother. Kyra hid in the hall so she could hear what he was telling her. We don’t think it was a homicide. That was how she found out that her father had died.

They moved back to the house, where there was a lot to do: folding up Dad’s uniforms for storage, packing up his regular clothes to give away, cleaning the house so it could be sold, getting ready to move away permanently. She caressed Dad’s medals and badges, shiny and neatly laid out in a box, and that was when she finally cried.

They found a piece of paper at the bottom of Dad’s dresser drawer.

“What is it?” she asked Mom.

Mom read it over. “It’s from your Dad’s commander, at the Army.” Her hands shook. “It shows how many people he had killed.”

She showed Kyra the number: one thousand two–hundred and fifty–one.

The number lingered in Kyra’s mind. As if that gave his life meaning. As if that defined him—and them.

Kyra walked quickly, pulling her coat tight against the late fall chill.

It was her senior year in college, and on–campus recruiting was in full swing. Because Kyra’s school was old and full of red brick buildings named after families that had been wealthy and important even before the founding of this republic, its students were desirable to employers.

She was on her way back to her apartment from a party hosted by a small quantitative trading company in New York that was generating good buzz on campus. Companies in management consulting, financial services, and Silicon Valley had booked hotel rooms around the school and were hosting parties for prospective interviewees every night, and Kyra, as a comp sci major, found herself in high demand. This was the night when she would need to finalize her list of ranked preferences, and she had to strategize carefully to have a shot at getting one of the interview slots for the most coveted companies in the lottery.

“Excuse me,” a young man stepped in her way. “Would you sign this petition?”

She looked at the clipboard held in front of her. Stop the War.

Technically, America wasn’t at war. There had been no declaration of war by Congress, just the president exercising his office’s inherent authority. But maybe the war had never stopped. America left; America went back; America promised to leave again some time. A decade had passed; people kept on dying far away.

“I’m sorry,” Kyra said, not looking the boy in the eyes. “I can’t.”

“Are you for the war?” The boy’s voice was tired, the incredulity almost an act. He was there canvassing for signatures alone in the evening because no one cared. When so few Americans died, the “conflict” didn’t seem real.

How could she explain to him that she did not believe in the war, did not want to have anything to do with it, and yet, signing the petition the boy held would seem to her tantamount to a betrayal of the memory of her father, would seem a declaration that what he had done was wrong? She did not want him to be defined by the number on that piece of paper her mother kept hidden at the bottom of the box in the attic.

So all she said was, “I’m not into politics.”

Back in her apartment, Kyra took off her coat and flipped on the TV.

…the largest protest so far in front of the American Embassy. Protestors are demanding that the U.S. cease the drone strikes, which so far have caused more than three hundred deaths in the country this year, many of whom the protestors claim were innocent civilians. The U.S. Ambassador…

Kyra turned off the TV. Her mood had been ruined, and she could not focus on the task of ranking her interview preferences. Agitated, she tried to clean the apartment, scrubbing the sink vigorously to drive the images in her mind away.

As she had grown older, Kyra had read and seen every interview with other drone operators who suffered from PTSD. In the faces of those men, she had searched for traces of her father.

I sat in an air–conditioned office and controlled the drone with a joystick while watching on a monitor what the drone camera saw. If a man was suspected of being the enemy, I had to make a decision and pull the trigger and then zoom in and watch as the man’s body parts flew around the screen as the rest of him bled out, until his body cooled down and disappeared from the infrared camera.

Kyra turned on the faucet and held her hands under the hot water, as if she could wash off the memory of her father coming home every evening: silent, sullen, gradually turning into a stranger.

Every time, you wonder: Did I kill the right person? Was the sack on that man’s back filled with bombs or just some hunks of meat? Were those three men trying to set up an ambush or were they just tired and taking a break behind those rocks by the road? You kill a hundred people, a thousand people, and sometimes you find out afterwards that you were wrong, but not always.

“You were a hero,” Kyra said. She wiped her face with her wet hands. The water was hot against her face and she could pretend it was all just water.

No. You don’t understand. It’s different from shooting at someone when they’re also shooting at you, trying to kill you. You don’t feel brave pushing a button to kill people who are not in uniform, who look like they’re going for a visit with a friend, when you’re sitting thousands of miles away, watching them through a camera. It’s not like a video game. And yet it also is. You don’t feel like a hero.

“I miss you. I wish I could have understood.”

Every day, after you’re done with killing, you get up from your chair and walk out of the office building and go home. Along the way you hear the birds chittering overhead and see teenagers walking by, giggling or moping, self–absorbed in their safe cocoons, and then you open the door to your home. Your spouse wants to tell you about her annoying boss and your children are waiting for you to help them with their homework, and you can’t tell them a thing you’ve done.

I think either you become crazy or you already were.

She did not want him to be defined by the number on that piece of paper her mother kept hidden at the bottom of the box in the attic.

“They counted wrong, Dad,” Kyra said. “They missed one death.”

Kyra walked down the hall dejectedly. She was done with her last interview of the day—a hot Silicon Valley startup. She had been nervous and distracted and had flubbed the brainteaser. It had been a long day and she didn’t get much sleep the night before.

She was almost at the elevator when she noticed an interview schedule posted on the door of the suite next to the elevator for a company named AWS Systems. It hadn’t been completely filled. A few of the slots on the bottom were blank; that generally meant an undesirable company.

She took a closer look at the recruiting poster. They did something related to robotics. There were some shots of office buildings on a landscaped, modern campus. Bullet points listed competitive salary and benefits. Not flashy, but it seemed attractive enough. Why weren’t people interested?

Then she saw it: “Candidates need to pass screening for security clearance.” That would knock out many of her classmates who weren’t U.S. citizens. And it likely meant government contracts. Defense, probably. She shuddered. Her family had had enough of war.

She was about to walk away when her eyes fell on the last bullet point on the poster: “Relieve the effects of PTSD on our heroes.”

She wrote her name on one of the blank lines and sat down on the bench outside the door to wait.

“You have impressive credentials,” the man said, “the best I’ve seen all day, actually. I already know we’ll want to talk to you some more. Do you have any questions?”

This was what Kyra had been waiting for all along. “You’re building robotic systems to replace human–controlled drones, aren’t you? For the war.”

The recruiter smiled. “You think we’re Cyberdyne Systems?”

Kyra didn’t laugh. “My father was a drone operator.”

The man became serious. “I can’t reveal any classified information. So we have to speak only in hypotheticals. Hypothetically, there may be advantages to using autonomous robotic systems over human–operated machines. Robots.”

“Like what? It can’t be about safety. The drone operators are perfectly safe back here. You think machines will fight better?”

“No, we’re not interested in making ruthless killer robots. But we shouldn’t make people do the jobs that should be done by machines.”

Kyra’s heart beat faster. “Tell me more.”

“There are many reasons why a machine makes a better soldier than a human. A human operator has to make decisions based very limited information: just what he can see from a video feed, sometimes alongside intelligence reports. Deciding whether to shoot when all you have to go on is the view from a shaking camera and confusing, contradictory intel is not the kind of thinking humans excel at. There’s too much room for error. An operator might hesitate too long and endanger an innocent, or he might be too quick on the trigger and violate the rules of engagement. Decisions by different operators would be based on hunches and emotions and at odds with each other. It’s inconsistent and inefficient. Machines can do better.”

Worst of all, Kyra thought, a human can be broken by the experience of having to decide.

“If we take these decisions away from people, make it so that individuals are out of the decision–making loop, the result should be less collateral damage and a more humane, more civilized form of warfare.”

But all Kyra could think was: No one would have to do what my father did.

The process of getting security clearance took a while. Kyra’s mother was surprised when Kyra called to tell her that government investigators might come to talk to her, and Kyra wasn’t sure how to explain why she had taken this job when there were much better offers from other places. So she just said, “This company helps veterans and soldiers.”

Her mother said, carefully, “Your father would be proud of you.”

Meanwhile, they assigned her to the civilian applications division, which made robots for factories and hospitals. Kyra worked hard and followed all the rules. She didn’t want to mess up before she got to do what she really wanted. She was good at her job, and she hoped they noticed.

Then one morning Dr. Stober, the head roboticist, called her to join him in a conference room.

Kyra’s heart was in her throat as she walked over. Was she going to be let go? Had they decided that she couldn’t be trusted because of what had happened to her father? That she might be emotionally unstable? She had always liked Dr. Stober, who seemed like a good mentor, but she had never worked with him closely.

“Welcome to the team,” said a smiling Dr. Stober. Besides Kyra, there were five other programmers in the room. “Your security clearance arrived this morning, and I knew I wanted you on this team right away. This is probably the most interesting project at the company right now.”

The other programmers smiled and clapped. Kyra grinned at each of them in turn as she shook their outstretched hands. They all had reputations as the stars in the company.

“You’re going to be working on the AW–1 Guardians, one of our classified projects.”

One of the other programmers, a young man named Alex, cut in: “These aren’t like the field transport mules and remote surveillance crafts we already make. The Guardians are unmanned, autonomous flying vehicles about the size of a small truck armed with machine guns and missiles.”

Kyra noticed that Alex was really excited by the weapons systems.

“I thought we make those kinds already,” Kyra said.

“Not exactly,” Dr. Stober said. “Our other combat systems are meant for surgical strikes in remote places or are prototypes for frontline combat, where basically anything that moves can be shot. But these are designed for peacekeeping in densely populated urban areas, especially places where there are lots of Westerners or friendly locals to protect. Right now we still have to rely on human operators.”

Alex said in a deadpan voice, “It would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to worry about collateral damage.”

Dr. Stober noticed that Kyra didn’t laugh and gestured for Alex to stop. “Sarcasm aside, as long as we’re occupying their country, there will be locals who think they can get some advantage from working with us and locals who wish we’d go away. I doubt that dynamic has changed in five thousand years. We have to protect those who want to work with us from those who don’t, or else the whole thing falls apart. And we can’t expect the Westerners doing reconstruction over there to stay holed up in walled compounds all the time. They have to mingle.”

“It’s not always easy to tell who’s a hostile,” Kyra said.

“That’s the heart of the issue. Most of the time, the population is ambivalent. They’ll help us if they think it’s safe to do so, and they’ll help the militants if they think that’s the more convenient choice.”

“I’ve always said that if they choose to help the militants blend in, I don’t see why we need to be that careful. They made a decision,” Alex said.

“I suppose some interpretations of the rules of engagement would agree with you. But we’re telling the world that we’re fighting a new kind of war, a clean war, one where we hold ourselves to a higher standard. How people see the way we conduct ourselves is just as important nowadays.”

“How do we do that?” Kyra asked, before Alex could further derail the conversation.

“The key piece of software we have to produce needs to replicate what the remote operators do now, only better. The government has supplied us with thousands of hours of footage from the drone operations during the last decade or so. Some of them got the bad guys, and some of them got the wrong people. We’ll need to watch the videos and distill the decision–making process of the operators into a formal procedure for identifying and targeting militants embedded in urban conditions, eliminate the errors, and make the procedure repeatable and applicable to new situations. Then we’ll improve it by tapping into the kind of big data that individual operators can’t integrate and make use of.”

The code will embody the minds of my father and others like him so that no one would have to do what they did, endure what they endured.

“Piece of cake,” said Alex. And the room laughed, except for Kyra and Dr. Stober.

Kyra threw herself into her work, a module they called the ethical governor, which was responsible for minimizing collateral damage when the robots fired upon suspects. She was working on a conscience for killing machines.

She came in on the weekends and stayed late, sometimes sleeping in the office. She didn’t view it as a difficult sacrifice to make. She couldn’t talk about what she was working on with the few friends she had, and she didn’t really want to spend more time outside the office with people like Alex.

She watched videos of drone strikes over and over. She wondered if any were missions her father had flown. She understood the confusion, the odd combination of power and powerlessness experienced when watching a man one is about to kill through a camera, the pressure to decide.

The hardest part was translating this understanding into code. Computers require precision, and the need to articulate vague hunches had a way of forcing one to confront the ugliness that could remain hidden in the ambiguity of the human mind.

To enable the robots to minimize collateral damage, Kyra had to assign a value to each life that might be endangered in a crowded urban area. One of the most effective ways for doing this—at least in simulations—also turned out to be the most obvious: profiling. The algorithm needed to translate racial characteristics and hints about language and dress into a number that held the power of life and death. She felt paralyzed by the weight of her task.

“Everything all right?” Dr. Stober asked.

Kyra looked up from her keyboard. The office lights were off; it was dark outside. She was practically the last person left in the building.

“You’ve been working a lot.”

“There’s a lot to do.”

“I’ve reviewed your check–in history. You seem to be stuck on the part where you need the facial recognition software to give you a probability on ethnic identity.”

Kyra gazed at Dr. Stober’s silhouette in the door to her office, back–lit by the hall lights. “There’s no API for that.”

“I know, but you’re resisting the need to roll your own.”

“It seems… wrong.”

Dr. Stober came in and sat down in the chair on the other side of her desk. “I learned something interesting recently. During World War II, the U.S. Army trained dogs for warfare. They would act as sentries, guards, or maybe even as shock troops in an island invasion.”

Kyra looked at him, waiting.

“The dogs had to be trained to tell allies apart from enemies. So they used Japanese–American volunteers to teach the dogs to profile, to attack those with certain kinds of faces. I’ve always wondered how those volunteers felt. It was repugnant, and yet it was also necessary.”

“They didn’t use German–American or Italian–American volunteers, did they?”

“No, not that I’m aware of. I’m telling you this not to dismiss the problematic nature of your work, but to show you that the problem you’re trying to solve isn’t entirely new. The point of war is to prefer the lives of one group over the lives of another group. And short of being able to read everyone’s minds, you must go with shortcuts and snap heuristics to tell apart those who must die from those who must be saved.”

Kyra thought about this. She could not exempt herself from Dr. Stober’s logic. After all, she had lamented her father’s death for years, but she had never shed a tear for the thousands he had killed, no matter how many might have been innocent. His life was more valuable to her than all of them added together. His suffering meant more. It was why she was here.

“Our machines can do a better job than people. Attributes like appearance and language and facial expressions are but one aspect of the input. Your algorithm can integrate the footage from city–wide surveillance by thousands of other cameras, the metadata of phone calls and social visits, individualized suspicions built upon data too massive for any one person to handle. Once the programming is done, the robots will make their decisions consistently, without bias, always supported by the evidence.”

Kyra nodded. Fighting with robots meant that no one had to feel responsible for killing.

Kyra’s algorithm had to be specified exactly and submitted to the government for approval. Sometimes the proposals came back marked with questions and changes.

She imagined some general (advised, perhaps, by a few military lawyers) looking through her pseudocode line by line.

A target’s attributes would be evaluated and assigned numbers. Is the target a man? Increase his suspect score by thirty points. Is the target a child? Decrease his suspect score by twenty–five points. Does the target’s face match any of the suspected insurgents with at least a fifty–percent probability? Increase his suspect score by five hundred points.

And then there was the value to be assigned to the possible collateral damage around the target. Those who could be identified as Americans or had a reasonable probability of being Americans had the highest value. Then came native militia forces and groups who were allied with U.S. forces and the local elites. Those who looked poor and desperate were given the lowest values. The algorithm had to formalize anticipated fallout from media coverage and politics.

Kyra was getting used to the process. After the specifications had gone back and forth a few times, her task didn’t seem so difficult.

Kyra looked at the number on the check. It was large.

“It’s a small token of the company’s appreciation for your efforts,” said Dr. Stober. “I know how hard you’ve been working. We got the official word on the trial period from the government today. They’re very pleased. Collateral damage has been reduced by more than eighty percent since they started using the Guardians, with zero erroneous targets identified.”

Kyra nodded. She didn’t know if the eighty percent was based on the number of lives lost or the total amount of points assigned to the lives. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think too hard about it. The decisions had already been made.

“We should have a team celebration after work.”

And so, for the first time in months, Kyra went out with the rest of the team. They had a nice meal, some good drinks, sang karaoke. And Kyra laughed and enjoyed hearing Alex’s stories about his exploits in war games.

“Am I being punished?” Kyra asked.

“No, no, of course not,” Dr. Stober said, avoiding her gaze. “It’s just administrative leave until… the investigation completes. Payroll will still make bi–weekly deposits and your health insurance will continue, of course. I don’t want you to think you’re being scapegoated. It’s just that you did most of the work on the ethical governor. The Senate Armed Forces Committee is really pushing for our methodology, and I’ve been told that the first round of subpoenas a coming down next week. You won’t be called up, but we’ll likely have to name you.”

Kyra had seen the video only once, and once was enough. Someone in the market had taken it with a cellphone, so it was shaky and blurry. No doubt the actual footage from the Guardians would be much clearer, but she wasn’t going to get to see that. It would be classified at a level beyond her clearance.

The market was busy, the bustling crowd trying to take advantage of the cool air in the morning. It looked, if you squinted a bit, like the farmer’s market that Kyra sometimes went to, to get her groceries. A young American man, dressed in the distinctive protective vest that expat reconstruction advisors and technicians wore over there, was arguing with a merchant about something, maybe the price of the fruits he wanted to buy.

Reporters had interviewed him afterwards, and his words echoed in Kyra’s mind: “All of a sudden, I heard the sounds made by the Guardians patrolling the market change. They stopped to hover over me, and I knew something was wrong.”

In the video, the crowd was dispersing around him, pushing, jostling with each other to get out of the way. The person who took the video ran, too, and the screen was a chaotic blur.

When the video stabilized, the vantage point was much further. Two black robots about the size of small trucks hovered in the air above the kiosk. They looked like predatory raptors. Metal monsters.

Even in the cellphone video, it was possible to make out the recorded warning in the local language the robots projected via loudspeakers. Kyra didn’t know what the warnings said.

A young boy, seemingly oblivious to the hovering machines above him, was running at the American man, laughing and screaming, his arms opened wide as if he wanted to embrace the man.

“I just froze. I thought, oh God, I’m going to die. I’m going to die because this kid has a bomb on him.”

The militants had tried to adapt to the algorithms governing the robots by exploiting certain weaknesses. Because they realized that children were assigned a relatively high value for collateral damage purposes and a relatively low value for targeting purposes, they began to use more children for their missions. Kyra had had to tweak the algorithm and the table of values to account for these new tactics.

“All of your changes were done at the request of the Army and approved by them,” said Dr. Stober. “Your programming followed the updated rules of engagement and field practices governing actual soldiers. Nothing you’ve done was wrong. The Senate investigation will be just be a formality.”

In the video, the boy kept on running towards the American. The warnings from the hovering Guardians changed, got louder. The boy did not stop.

A few more boys and girls, some younger, some older, came into the area cleared by the crowd. They ran after the first boy, shouting.

The militants had developed an anti–drone tactic that was sometimes effective. They’d send the first bomber out, alone, to draw the fire of the drones. And while the drone operators were focused on him and distracted, a swarm of backup bombers would rush out to get to the target while the drones shot up the first man.

Robots could not be distracted. And Kyra had programmed them to react correctly to such tactics.

The boy was now only a few steps away from the lone American. The Guardian hovering on the right took a single shot. Kyra flinched at the sound from the screen.

“It was so loud,” said the young man in his interview. “I had heard the Guardians shoot before, but only from far away. Up close was a completely different experience. I heard the shot with my bones, not my ears.”

The child collapsed to the ground immediately. Where his head had been, there was now only empty space. The Guardians had to be efficient when working in a crowd. Clean.

A few more loud shots came from the video, making Kyra jump involuntarily. The cellphone owner panned his camera over, and there were a few more bundles of rags and blood on the ground. The other children.

The crowd stayed away, but a few of the men were coming back into the clearing, moving closer, raising their voices. But they didn’t dare to move too close to the stunned young American, because the two Guardians were still hovering overhead. It took a few minutes before actual American soldiers and the local police showed up at the scene and made everyone go home. The video ended there.

“When I saw that dead child lying in the dust, all I could feel was relief, an overwhelming joy. He had tried to kill me, and I had been saved. Saved by our robots.”

Later, when the bodies were searched by the bomb–removal robots, no explosives were found.

The child’s parents came forward. They explained that their son wasn’t right in the head. They usually locked him in the house, but that day, somehow he had gotten out. No one knew why he ran at that American. Maybe he thought the man looked different and he was curious.

All the neighbors insisted to the authorities that the boy wasn’t dangerous. Never hurt anyone. His siblings and friends had been chasing after him, trying to stop him before he got into any trouble.

His parents never stopped crying during the interview. Some of the commenters below the interview video said that they were probably sobbing for the camera, hoping to get more compensation out of the American government. Other commenters were outraged. They constructed elaborate arguments and fought each other in a war of words in the comment threads, trying to score points.

Kyra thought about the day she’d made the changes in the programming. She had been sipping a frappé because the day was hot. She remembered deleting the old value of a child’s life and putting in a new one. It had seemed routine, just another change like hundreds of other tweaks she had already made. She remembered deleting one IF and adding another, changing the control flow to defeat the enemy. She remembered feeling thrilled at coming up with a neat solution to the nested logic. It was what the Army had requested, and she had decided to do her best to give it to them faithfully.

“Mistakes happen,” said Dr. Stober. “The media circus will eventually end, and all the hand–wringing will stop. News cycles are finite, and something new will replace all this. We just have to wait it out. We’ll figure out a way to make the system work better next time. This is better. This is the future of warfare.”

Kyra thought about the sobbing parents, about the dead child, about the dead children. She thought about the eighty–percent figure Dr. Stober had quoted. She thought about the number on her father’s scorecard, and the parents and children and siblings behind those numbers. She thought about her father coming home.

She got up to leave.

“You must remember,” said Dr. Stober from behind her, “You’re not responsible.”

She said nothing.

It was rush hour when Kyra got off the bus to walk home. The streets were filled with cars and the sidewalks with people. Restaurants were filling up quickly; waitresses flirted with customers; men and women stood in front of display windows to gawk at the wares.

She was certain that most of them were bored with coverage of the war. No one was coming home in body bags any more. The war was clean. This was the point of living in a civilized country, wasn’t it? So that one did not have to think about wars. So that somebody else, something else, would.

She strode past the waitress who smiled at her, past the diners who did not know her name, into the throng of pedestrians on the sidewalk, laughing, listening to music, arguing and shouting, oblivious to the monster who was walking in their midst, ignorant of the machines thousands of miles away deciding who to kill next.

Ghost Girl ^{Rich Larson}

IGUO HAD ANOTHER REPORT ON his news feed about a ghost girl living in the dump outside Bujumbura, so he put two Cokes in a hydrobag and hailed a taxi outside the offices. It was cool season now and the sky was rusty red. The weather probes were saying dust storm, dust storm, remember to shut the windows. Iguo put his head back against the concrete wall and wondered how a ghost girl living by herself was not yet dismembered and smuggled out to Tanzania. Maybe some entrepreneur was cutting her hair to sell to fishermen. Maybe she was very lucky.

The graffitied hump of the taxi bullied its way through bicycles and bleating sheep. Iguo slung the hydrobag over his shoulder and pulled out his policense. This was not an emergency, not strictly, but Iguo did not pay for transit if it could be free. The taxi rumbled to a stop and when the door opened, it bisected a caricature of President Dantani shitting on a rebel flag. He climbed inside and switched off the icy blast air conditioning.

“Bujumbura junkyard,” Iguo said, pressing his policense against the touchscreen.

“Calculating,” said the taxi.

The junkyard was a plastic mountain. Whatever wire fence had once marked its boundaries was long since buried. Bony goats wandered up and down the face, chewing on circuits. Scavengers with rakes and battered scanners stumped around the bottom, searching for useable parts or gold conductors. Iguo had the taxi stop well away, before it gutted a tire on some hidden piece of razor wire or trash. It didn’t want to wait, but he used the policense again and it reluctantly hunkered down.

There was a scavenger with no nose and no tag sitting in the sand. Stubble was white on his dark skull. A cigarette dangled from his lips. Iguo squatted across from him.

“Mwiriwe, Grandfather.”

“Mwiriwe, Policeman. My shit, all legal.” He waved off a fly. “You ask anyone.”

“I’m looking for the ghost girl,” Iguo said. “She lives here, yeah?”

The scavenger massaged his knobby calves. “Oh, yes.”

“How long here?”

“Aye, two weeks, three weeks since she show up. Her and her imfizi.” He spat into the sand. “She’s a little witch, like they say. She’s got the thing following her all around.”

Iguo squinted up the crest of the junk pile. “How does she survive?” he asked. He saw the scampering silhouettes of children and wondered if one was her.

The scavenger shrugged. “She finds good stuff. Me, I buy some. And nobody trouble her, or that damn imfizi take them to pieces.” He tapped the orange ember of his cigarette, eyed the hydrobag on Iguo’s shoulder. “You here to decommission it? You look soldier.”

“I’m here for the girl,” Iguo said.

“Witch,” the scavenger corrected. “You say it’s genes, but it’s witch. I know. I see her.”

“Goodnight, Grandfather.” Iguo straightened up. He had speakaloud pamphlets in the taxi, ones that explained albino genetics in cheerful Kirundi and then French, ones he did not distribute as often as he was supposed to, but Iguo knew that by the time a man is old his mind is as hard as a stone.

He found the ghost girl rooting through electric cabling, feet agile on the shifting junk. Her sundress was shabby yellow and stained with gasoline. Her hands and feet were callused. Still, she was tagged: her tribal showed up Hutu and she was inoculated against na–virus. Not born in the street, then.

“Anything good?” Iguo asked.

She turned around and blinked rheumy pink eyes at him. “Who are you?”

“My name is Iguo. I work for the government.” He unslung the hydrobag and took out the first bottle. “You want a fanta?”

“Yes.” The girl rubbed her pale cheek. “Yes, I wanna.”

“Here.” Iguo opened the chilly Coke between his molars. Clack. Hiss. He held it out. “What’s your name?”

“Belise.” The ghost girl wound the cable carefully around herself, eyes on the sweating bottle. “Set it down, back up some,” she suggested. “I’ll get it.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” Iguo said, wedging the drink in a nook of bent rebar. “I’m here to take you somewhere safe. Here, here isn’t safe for you.” He scooted back. “Belise, do you know what an albino hunter is?”

“It’s safe,” Belise said, patting a piece of rusty armor. “My baba is here.” She clambered down to get the Coke and all at once something very large burrowed out from the junk pile. Motors whirred as it unfolded to its feet, shedding scrap metal. The robot was sized like a gorilla and skinned like a tank. The sensory suite glittered red at him. Iguo hadn’t seen an imfizi drone in many years and the sight jolted him.

“Shit,” Iguo said, as Belise skipped back up the pile, bottle cradled in her grimy hands. He realized the old man had been talking sense.

“My baba,” the ghost girl said proudly. “My daddy is very strong.” She swigged from the Coke and grinned at him.

Iguo had retreated to the bottom to re–evaluate things. Clouds were still building crenellations in the sky, and now wind whistled in and out of the junk. He skyped the offices for a list of active combat drones, but of course it was classified, and the official line was still that they had all been smelted. He sat and drank his own Coke and watched Belise step nimbly across a car chassis while the drone lumbered behind her, puffing smoke.

There had been many of them, once. Iguo knew. He remembered seeing them stalk across open ground sponging up rebel fire like terrible gods while the flesh troops circled and sweated, lying in this ditch and then another, so fragile. He remembered the potent mix of envy and disdain they all felt for the piloting jackmen, cocooned safe in neural webbing a mile away.

He remembered best when one of the imfizi was hacked, taken over by some rebel with a signal cobbled together from a smartphone and a neural jack. People said later that it had been Rufykiri himself, the Razor, the hacker who sloughed off government security like snakeskin, but nobody really knew. Iguo remembered mostly because that day was when half of his unit was suddenly gone in an eruption of blood and marrow. Iguo did not trust drones.

“You see, now.” The old scavenger was back. He ran a dirty nail around the hollow of his nose. “Nobody troubles her. That thing, deadly. She has it bewitched.”

“It’s malfunctioning,” Iguo said. “Not all of them came back for decommissioning. Crude AIs, they get confused. Running an escort protocol or something like that.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not witchcraft.”

“Lucky malfunction for her,” the old man said. “Lucky, lucky. Else she would be chopped up, yeah? For eurocash, not francs. Much money for a ghost.” He smiled. “A rocket could do in that imfizi. Or an EMP. You have one?”

“I will chop you up, Grandfather—” Iguo took a long pull at his drink, “—if you talk any more of muti. You live in a new time.”

“What, you don’t want to be rich?” The scavenger hacked up a laugh.

“Not for killing children,” Iguo said.

“Ah, but you were in the war.”

Iguo stood up.

“You were in the war,” the old man repeated. “You sowed the na–virus and burned the villages and used the big knife on the deserters. Didn’t you? Weren’t you in the war?”

Iguo wanted his fingers around the scavenger’s piped neck until the esophagus buckled, so he took his Coke and walked back up to try again with the ghost girl.

The drone had been repairing itself, he could see it now. Swatches of hardfoam and crudely–welded panels covered its chassis. Spare cables hung like dead plants from its shoulders. It was hunched very still, only swiveling one camera to track Iguo’s approach. Belise was sitting between its feet.

“Dunna come any closer,” she said. “He might get mad at you.” Her brows shot up. “Is that fanta for me as well?”

“No,” Iguo said. He considered it. “Too much sugar is bad for you. You won’t grow.”

The imfizi shifted slightly and Iguo took a step back.

Belise laughed. “My baba used to say that.”

“My mother used to say it,” Iguo said. “When I chewed too much sugarcane.” He watched the drone uneasily. It was hard to tell where it was looking. “Did you have a mama?” he asked her.

“I don’t remember,” Belise said. She rubbed at her nose, smeared snot on her dress.

“And your baba?”

“He’s here.” Belise slapped the metal trunk behind her. “With me.”

“The imfizi keeps you safe, yes? Like a father.” Iguo maneuvered a rubber tire to sit on. Some of the scavengers down below were using a brazier for tea and the wind carried its bitter smoke. “But maybe it will not always be that way,” he said. “Drones are not so much like you and me, Belise. They can break.”

“They can fix,” Belise said, pointing to the patched carapace.

Iguo remembered much simpler jobs, where the men and women were frightened for their lives and wanted so badly to be tagged, to go to the safehouse, for the government to help them.

“If the drone decides its mission is over, it might leave,” Iguo said. “Or it might paint you.”

“Paint me?”

“Paint you a target,” Iguo said. “So it can kill you.”

Belise shook her small white head, serene. “No, that won’t happen. He’s my baba.”

Iguo sipped until his drink was gone. “I’ll take you to a place with so much food,” he said. “No more scrap–hunting. Nice beds and nice food. And other children.”

“I’ll stay.” Belise pointed and Iguo followed her finger. “Take those two. You can have them go with you. I don’t like them.”

Two small boys rummaging in the junk, insect–thin arms. One had a hernia peeking out from under his torn shirt. They cast nervous looks up every so often, for the leviathan drone and the albino girl and now for the policeman.

“They don’t need my help,” Iguo said. “My job is to help you. Many people would try to kill you. Cut off your limbs. The government is trying to make you safe.”

“Why?”

Iguo rubbed his forehead. “Because albino–killings are very publicized. President Dantani is forging new Western relations, and the killings reflect badly, badly, badly on our country. And now that the war is over, and there are no more rebels to hunt, people who know only how to murder are finding the muti market.”

“Oh.”

“And the government cares for the good of all its people,” Iguo added. He looked at the empty glass bottle between his palms, then hurled it off into the growing dusk. The shatter noise came faint. Belise had followed the trajectory, lips pursed. Now she looked up.

“Not what my baba said.” She paused. “About the government. He said other things.”

“Your baba is dead, Belise.”

Belise nodded, and for a moment Iguo thought they were making progress. “He died with the bleeding,” she said. “With the sickness. But he told me not to worry, because he had a plan. He made his soul go softly into the imfizi.” She smiled upward, and the pity in Iguo’s gut sharpened into something else. He stared at the array of red sensors, the scattered spider eyes.

“Your daddy, Belise.” Iguo put a finger up to his temple and twisted. “Was he a jackman?”

Belise winced. She stared at the ground. When she looked up, her raw pink eyes were defiant. “He was a rebel,” she said.

Back in the birdshit–caked taxi, there was a memo on misuse of government funds. Iguo tugged it off the screen and punched in his address instead. Through the window, he saw scavengers taking in their equipment. Some were pitching nylon tents around the brazier. The old noseless man was tearing open a package of disposable phones, but he looked up when the ignition rumbled. He waved.

Iguo’s fingers buzzed as he typed the word into Google: softcopy. A slew of articles in English and German fluttered up. He struggled through half a paragraph before switching over to a translation service. Iguo was not a hacker, but he’d heard the term used. Always between jackmen, usually in a hot argument.

The taxi began to rattle over loose–packed gravel, and Iguo had it read aloud to him. Softcopy, a theoretical transfer of human consciousness into an artificial brain. Ramifications for artificial intelligence. Softcopy claim in NKorea revealed to be a hoax. Increased use of neural webbing has led to new questions. Evolution of the human mind.

The taxi sent him an exposé on corruption in the Burundi police forces as a kicker, but Iguo hardly registered it as he swung himself out of the vehicle. He scanned himself through the door in the jagged–glass–topped wall, scattered the pigeons on his apartment’s stoop. The stairs went by three at a time, and then he was in front of his work tablet, working the policense like a bludgeon.

He pulled up reports from three years ago. Death reports. The list was long, long, long. He scrolled through it and they came to him in flashes, so many Jonathans and then so many Josephs, good Christian names for godless rebels, and then he found him: Joseph Rufykiri, the Razor. Responsible for the longest sustained information attack of the war, for the interception of encrypted troop movements, for the malicious reprogramming of military drones, farm equipment, wind turbines, and once a vibrator belonging to the general’s wife.

He was dead by na–virus, but survived by an albino daughter. Iguo stared at the data and only half–believed it, but half was enough. He found a rumpled rain jacket under the bed and threw it on, and into the deepest pocket he dropped his old service handgun. Useless, unless he put it right up to the drone’s gut, right where the armor had fallen away.

Iguo thought of the blood spray and his comrades jerking and falling like cut puppets as the hacked drone spun its barrels. He thought of Joseph Rufykiri between blood–soaked sheets, whispering to his daughter that he had a plan and that she did not have to worry.

He had to know, so Iguo stepped back out under the swelling sky and hailed a new taxi, one with less graffiti, as it began to storm.

The dust felt like flying shrapnel by the time Iguo struggled out of the taxi, wrapped up to the eyes. It battered and bit his fingers. The sky was dark and its rusty clouds were surging now, attacking. It looked like the scavengers had packed away and found shelter elsewhere, or else their tents had been torn off like great black scabs. Iguo hurried to where the junk pile could provide some shelter.

On his way a scavenger fled past, stumbling, and then Iguo saw the blurry shape of a jeep up ahead through the sand. Something besides the storm was happening. He crouched against the wheel–well and checked his gun where the dust couldn’t reach it. He checked it again. He breathed in, out, and craned his head around the edge of the vehicle.

Three muti hunters, swathed in combat black with scarves wrapped tight against the storm. Iguo counted three small–caliber guns but could hear nothing now over the howl of the dust. They ducked and swayed on their feet, and the imfizi drone clanked and churned and tried to track them as the grit assaulted its many joints. Bullets had cratered its front, and bled coolant was being sucked off into the wind. Belise was nowhere to be seen.

The drone was long since dry of ammunition, and the hunter was caught off–guard when it lunged, quicker than Iguo had ever seen a drone move, and pinioned him to the ground. The other two rounded on it, firing in rhythm. The imfizi buckled and twitched with the impacts, but then reared up with the hunter’s leg still mashed in its pincer. Reared higher. Higher. Blood spouted as the man tore silently in half.

The other hunters reversed now, moving clumsily in the wind, and one hauled a grenade from his back and lobbed. For a moment, Iguo thought it was a dud, but then a whine shivered in his teeth and the hair on his neck stood up on end and he realized it was an EMP. The drone shuddered once, twice. Froze. The hunters converged.

Something clutched onto Iguo’s calf. He looked down, and of course it was Belise, her translucent hands kneading his ankle, and she was crying something but Iguo could not read lips. He shook her off. He steadied himself. He ducked around the side of the vehicle, and fired twice.

The first hunter dropped, swinging on his heel, punched through the skull and nicked in the shoulder. Iguo had not forgotten where to put the bullets.

Arm coming up, scarved head turning. Iguo made his body rigid and snapped off another shot, feeling it into the chest but hitting belly instead. The hunter fired back but the retort was lost in the dust and Iguo had no idea how close he’d come to dying so he did not falter. The hunter’s scarf ripped free, oscillating wildly, as the next bullet splintered through throat and jaw.

Iguo stumbled to the bodies and scrabbled for their guns, but one had already been swallowed by the sand and the other was locked tight in a dead hand. He tried to throw up but only hurt his ribs. He crawled instead to the imfizi. Its red eyes were starting to blink back on. Iguo put a hand on either side of the carapace and leaned close. He stared hard into the cameras.

“Joseph Rufykiri,” he said, mouthing carefully.

The drone shuddered. The top half of the chassis rocked back. Rocked forward. Iguo mirrored the nod without really meaning to. He squinted back to where Belise was crouched, covering her eyes against the dust. Her skin was stark white against the black jeep. Tears were tracking through the grime on her face.

Iguo realized he had the gun pressed up against the rusty husk. “Do your penance,” he mumbled. “I do mine.” Then he stood up, almost bowled over in the wind, and turned to go.

The ghost girl said something to him but he still couldn’t hear. It might have been thanks. Iguo nodded her on, and she dashed towards her father, now getting to his iron feet. Iguo went to the jeep and found the two little boys on their bellies underneath. He put his head down.

“I have a taxi,” he said. “Come with me.” They exchanged looks with their dark eyes and shook dust from their dark heads. Then they wriggled out from under the vehicle and Iguo shielded them as best he could with the rain jacket.

He looked back only once. Belise was clambering into the drone’s arms, sheltered from the roaring wind, and then they were enveloped by the dust.

The Radio ^{Susan Jane Bigelow}

KAY SCANNED THE LIFELESS, SHREDDED bodies of her unit, the sensors embedded in her hands and torso coolly picking up data as her eyes flicked over each of them in turn.

The roadside bomb had spared only her, stranding her in the middle of ten thousand kilometers of the flat, featureless desert that covered most of Ianas. She kept trying to connect to the Sovene Army’s net, but there was nothing. She couldn’t transmit, she couldn’t receive. Her communications hardware had been too badly damaged by the blast.

There was nothing left to do but follow protocol. Once everything was documented, she sat by the road and waited to be retrieved, like the piece of equipment the Army considered her to be.

Time passed: hours, days, even weeks according to her internal clock. She watched as the corpses bloated and began to rot.

She could wait almost indefinitely. She didn’t need food or water, and her power cells were kept from draining by the sunlight and near–constant wind.

It did surprise her that no one came. Their course hadn’t been too different from the routine patrol sweep the base had ordered. Lt. Jasar had had a funny idea about the roads being sabotaged out here, even though things had been quiet lately, and had demanded that Leshandre turn down a random one to check it out. They’d driven for nearly a day before the bomb had proven the lieutenant right.

Still, it was strange. There were tracking satellites in orbit. They’d been in nominal contact with the base right up until the explosion, this stretch of desert wasn’t supposed to be terribly dangerous, and the Army swore it never left anyone behind.

So why was Kay still here?

On the thirty–seventh day, she registered something moving fast across the dusty flatness of the desert. She crouched behind the wreckage, cautiously assessing the situation.

The truck drew near, but it was soon clear that it wasn’t Army. Instead of a reassuring green and yellow, it was painted bright blue, and was old and beat–up.

She readied her weapon but held her fire. She couldn’t positively identify them as enemies, not yet.

The truck slowed to a stop in front of her, and three women and a man got out.

“Bomb work,” said one, a tall, thin woman, examining the remnants of the vehicle.

“Bolus’s,” said the shortest woman, spitting into the sand. “Sloppy.”

“Sovene Army,” said the third, a shrewd–looking middle–aged woman. “Had to have been here a while.” She glanced at Kay. “Their Synthetic’s still alive, though.” Her features suddenly shifted. “Oh… oh, no.” She leaned in close. “No. It can’t be.” She snapped a finger in front of Kay’s face. “Hey. Hey! You reading me in there?”

Kay didn’t respond. She wouldn’t, not to a civilian. That was against protocol.

“Musta been caught out here before the evacuation,” said the man. He was also short; he had a scruffy beard and talked slowly. “Probably still waiting for orders.”

The first woman didn’t respond but kept staring at Kay. She exchanged glances with the tall woman, who shook her head slightly.

“Jassalan, no,” the tall woman said.

“We could use a new radio,” said the short woman. She gestured at Kay. “Get your metal ass into the truck.”

Kay stayed put.

The short woman crossed her arms, annoyed, then reached out to smack Kay on the helmet. Kay reached out, quick as lightning, and grabbed the woman’s wrist.

“Hey!” she squawked.

“Let her go, Synthetic,” said the third woman. But Kay held fast as the short woman pulled and grunted and swore. “That’s an order. Recognize Captain Macrandal Jassalan. Serial number 2789–KK–CN.”

Kay’s internal Army database recognized the number. There was a caution next to it, and her first impulse was to disregard her command. But she hadn’t had orders in thirty–seven days. She released the short woman’s arm.

“Shit!” cursed Shorty. “Tin–can zombie!”

“Back off, Liss,” said Jassalan sternly. “Yago, clear out some space in the truck. We’re taking her with us.”

The man shrugged and went to do as he was told. After a moment, so did Liss.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked the tall woman, whose name Kay still didn’t know.

“Fuck no,” said Liss, still rubbing her wrist. “Leave it to run out of batteries or whatever.”

“They don’t run out,” said Jassalan distantly. “Synthetics last forever.”

“Then blow it up!”

“No,” said Jassalan firmly. “She’s coming. Get back in the truck, Liss. Payl, look around the wreck, see if there’s anything else we can use. Then we’ll get going.” She turned to Kay. “Go to the truck and sit in it,” she said.

Kay began to obey, but hesitated. “You’re wanted for desertion,” she said.

Jassalan smiled tiredly, wrinkles forming around her eyes. “I know. Did you want to bring me in?”

Kay did. But these people might be able to help her get back to the base. That was all she cared about right now. “No.”

“Thank you,” said Jassalan. She studied Kay again for a moment. “Get in the truck. I’ll be along shortly.”

Duty satisfied, Kay went and sat in the truck. Soon, everyone was ready, and they left the blast site behind.

They drove across the pancake flatness of the desert in silence. Jassalan was preoccupied, Liss fumed, and Payl kept sneaking looks at her. The man, Yago, was blessedly uninterested in Kay and looked out the window at the featureless scenery instead. After a few hours they came to a small rise. Kay’s sensors detected slight emanations coming from it.

“You have a power source,” she said. She calculated their location and plotted it. “You aren’t on my maps.”

“We wouldn’t be,” said Jassalan dryly. The truck pulled into a little gully next to the hillside, and everyone clambered out. “We’re home.”

Liss headed to her workshop, still grumbling about her hurt wrist. Payl and Yago started unloading scrap from the truck. Kay followed Jassalan into the cramped, dark kitchen, unsure of what to do next.

“We can’t use too much power here,” Jassalan said apologetically, putting water on to boil. “So we cook things the hard way. Takes time. Do you eat?”

“No,” said Kay.

“You have a name?” Jassalan asked.

“My identification is MSID–609872–K,” said Kay. “But I call myself Kay.”

“Right, right,” repeated Jassalan, as if lost in a mantra. “Right.”

“I need to contact Ianas Alpha,” said Kay. “As soon as possible.”

“We–ell,” said Jassalan, drawing the word out as she dropped pods of bluish vat–grown meat into the boiling water. “You can try. Won’t be anybody there, though.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kay.

“You must have been cut off before the evacuation,” said Jassalan.

“What evacuation?”

“The Sovene Army’s gone, hon,” said Jassalan matter–of–factly. “Headed back to space.”

Kay reeled, shocked. The Army was militarily superior to the small pack of rebels making trouble on cold, dry Ianas, and the planet was not yet fully pacified. “You’re lying.”

“Afraid not,” said Jassalan sympathetically. “They’re gone.”

“Why?” Kay asked, still processing. This had to be wrong, some kind of trick.

“Hm,” said Jassalan. “The usual sorts of trouble. Politics. Money. A government that can’t make up their minds about who they want to massacre this month.”

“I see,” said Kay. “May I use your communications equipment?”

“Go ahead,” said Jassalan, pointing. A screen and touchpad was mounted on a wall. “Doesn’t reach off–planet. Liss might be able to fix it up, but we have no reason to call anyone who isn’t on Ianas.”

Kay, still certain her host was lying about the evacuation, punched in the code for the base.

The connection established, and something that might have been joy filled Kay’s belly for a brief moment. But then a message flashed across the screen: Ianas Alpha Decommissioned | Contact Sector 15 Command.

Something fell away inside her.

It was true. The Army was gone. Her companions, both human and Synthetic, were gone. The base she’d called home for two years was… was…

A terrible aimless feeling penetrated her half–synthetic skull. If the base was gone, the mission was canceled. There were no orders, no missions, nothing.

She had nothing to do.

A hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” said Jassalan. “I don’t like the Army much these days, but I remember being in. They’re like your family, when you’re a part of it. I guess that’s true for you, too.”

“They may have just regrouped,” Kay said firmly. “They will return.”

“Maybe, but I hope they’re gone for good,” said Jassalan with a spark of anger. “The Sovenes have been nothing but trouble for this place.”

“But you’re a Sovene, too,” observed Kay.

“Well,” shrugged Jassalan. “Used to be.”

“You’re a deserter,” said Kay archly. To her there was very little worse than deserting.

“Sure,” said Jassalan, and waited. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

“I assumed you didn’t want to fight anymore,” said Kay.

That seemed to annoy Jassalan, and her frown deepened. “You have any idea what the Army does, Synthetic? The kinds of things they do here? I saw all kinds of horror. Civilians bombed. ‘Terrorists’ targeted, even when there was no evidence against them. Rape. Murder. Torture. You haven’t seen that?”

Kay had, though she quickly reminded herself that she’d seen many good things as well. She accepted the situation as… complicated.

“The worst part of it is that it’s all in service of a government that lies to everyone,” Jassalan continued. “That controls every aspect of their lives without giving them any kind of say at all!”

“That is not true,” said Kay tartly. She had done a lot of study of the way Sovenes chose their leadership. “There is the yearly vote, and the local—”

“Don’t bother explaining the system to me,” said Jassalan. “I don’t want to hear it. People back home think they have a voice, but they don’t. I saw the light. I left. I’m no coward.”

“Are all of you deserters?”

“Just me,” said Jassalan. She poked the meat bubbling away in the pot. “Everyone else is family. So you don’t have to follow their orders.”

Orders. She tried to think of what hers would say now. “I must report in to Sector 15 Command,” she said after a moment.

“You don’t have to,” said Jassalan intently. “And you can’t, we don’t have the equipment. Come have dinner.”

“I said I don’t need to eat,” said Kay brusquely.

“I’m not saying you should,” said Jassalan. “Just… come be with everyone.”

The look in Jassalan’s eyes gave Kay pause. She’d seen it once or twice before in the eyes of people who wanted her for some reason of their own, and those situations had never ended well.

But she had nothing to do, and the thought of standing here thinking about how cut off she was felt like staring into her own personal abyss, so she followed Jassalan to the table.

The dinner conversation flowed around her, avoiding her as if she stood on a rock in the middle of a stream. They talked about the food, the weather (still dry), and the paramilitary groups that were steadily taking power from the provisional government.

Liss glared at her, while Payl gave her little smiles. Yago ignored her, scarfed down his food, and quickly left the table. Jassalan ate very little, and studied Kay when she thought she wasn’t looking.

After the meal was done Kay helped Jassalan clear the table, and the others left to do other things. Payl went outside to fiddle with the moisture collectors. Liss went into another room and started banging on something metal.

“So tell me,” said Jassalan, a little too nonchalantly. “What’s your function? All–purpose communications, that sort of thing?”

“You should know that,” said Kay, stacking a load of dishes neatly on a table. Her internal sensors whined that her arms and legs could use maintenance. She ignored them.

“I do, I suppose. So. Do you like it?”

Kay turned to her. “Yes,” she said, in what she hoped was an assertive enough tone to forestall any further inquiry. She knew where this was going. People liked asking her intrusive questions like:

Are you happy?

Don’t you want to be free?

Do you have feelings?

Do you miss being human?

When she was new, she had tried to answer, but the answers were never what people wanted to hear.

“But it can’t be satisfying,” said Jassalan. “They don’t care about you.”

“I’m satisfied. I have friends.”

“They didn’t even come back for you!”

Kay shook her head, not wanting to think about that, but Jassalan pressed her.

“There’s a part of you that must remember that this isn’t what it should be like. You must remember being human. Don’t you?”

“I don’t,” said Kay shortly. “I’m not human.”

“You are,” said Jassalan, suddenly intense. “Part of you is human! You—you look like her. You even sound like her.”

“Who?” asked Kay, confused.

“My sister. When she died—she gave her body,” said Jassalan. Kay, frustrated, groaned to herself. One of those conversations, again. “We—we think she became one of those—one of you,” continued Jassalan. “And here you are. Deeslyn.”

“My name is Kay, and I am not your sister,” said Kay evenly. “Military Information Services have produced a film that explains how Synthetics are created, I could show it to you. It does a good job—”

“I don’t need to see a film,” said Jassalan, cutting her off. “I know my own sister!”

“The reuse of patriotic citizens’ donated bodies helps keep costs to the taxpayer low,” continued Kay, quoting from a standard explanation. “Bodies are outfitted with implants, and given power plants, and facial features are altered before we are activated. We are sculpted to give an attractive human appearance, so as to better interact with the populace and our fellow soldiers. You have no way of knowing if my donor body is related to you.”

“But you might be. When were you activated?”

“Four years ago.”

“That’s when she would have been processed!” said Jassalan, eyes bright with certainty. “It’s possible!”

Kay shook her head, her slow–burn anger finally beginning to kindle. “You aren’t listening. I am not your sister.”

“Can you check? Do you know whose body that is?” asked Jassalan hotly.

“I can, but I won’t,” said Kay.

Jassalan’s face screwed up in rage. “Get out, then. Get out! You’re just a brainwashed tool of the Sovenes! You’re nothing but a bunch of wires and processors lugging a corpse around!” A tear slipped down her cheek. “You’re unworthy of my sister’s body—or any human body. Get out!”

Kay wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter. The human or humans who had donated their bodies would be just as dead if she weren’t here.

But she didn’t say that. Instead, she left without saying another word.

The flat expanse of desert seemed to go on forever. Kay trudged through it, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. She was painfully aware, thanks to the constant readouts from her internal sensors, that her body needed some serious repairs.

And yet she kept going, straight through the desert. She’d roughly calculated her position; her onboard maps said there was a small village in this direction.

She didn’t know what she’d do when she got there. She knew she should report in to Sector 15 Command—that was her only mission now—but she kept exploring options to do so without really deciding on a plan she liked. She fretted over this; she was usually very fast to weigh possibilities and make decisions.

Her sensors picked up their truck before it was even visible, and she went on alert. She checked her weapons, unsure what Jassalan intended. She had some charge left in one of her pulse cannons, and two working dart missiles in each wrist. It wasn’t everything; half her systems were wrecked and her rifle had been damaged in the crash. It would have to do.

The truck roared up beside her, and Payl grinned out at her.

“Hey, Kay,” she called, turning the rhyme into a little two–note singsong. “Need a ride to town?”

“Jass’s mad,” Payl said as they bounced along. “But it’s her own fault.”

Kay had to agree, but said nothing. Payl was clearly getting some kind of thrill out of doing what Jassalan wouldn’t like.

“She told me about it,” said Payl. “She should know better.”

“Agreed,” said Kay coldly. Payl blanched at that, so Kay tried to pick up the conversation from there. “Did you know her? The woman Jassalan thought my body came from?”

“Sure,” said Payl. “I was married to her.”

“You were?” exclaimed Kay, surprised. “But—”

“She died a long time ago,” said Payl. “I let her go. Jass… can’t.”

“What was she like?” asked Kay.

Payl smiled a small, wistful smile. “Dees was… amazing. Quiet, kind and generous. She believed in a lot of causes, believed in service. Her death was bad for Jass; it’s why she dropped out of the Army. It’s probably why she asked me to come with them to Ianas; I think I’m some way of keeping a piece of Dees close. Do you really not know anything at all about who you—ah, who your body’s from?”

“No,” said Kay. “But I could.”

“You could?”

“It’s a file in my core,” said Kay. “I’ve never accessed it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not that person,” said Kay flatly. “I’m me.”

“Oh,” said Payl. “I think I get that.”

A long moment passed. Payl drummed her hands on the steering wheel.

“So, are you okay?” Payl asked at last.

Kay didn’t know what to say to that. People had never asked her that. “Yes,” she said at last. “I think so.”

“You think so?” Payl said jokingly. “Don’t you have sensors and all that inside to tell you?”

Humans so rarely understood, thought Kay. They were a mess, a whirling maelstrom of emotions. Kay and other Synthetics seemed like a placid pool by comparison, but still she had her tides, and her ripples, and even feelings humans seemed to lack.

Among others, there was a sort of beyond–certainty that she seemed to feel only with her synthetic parts. It was a cold and awful feeling, and she’d never succeeded in explaining it to humans.

“So where were you heading? I mean, after town,” Payl said. “Where next?”

“Sector 15,” said Kay. “I have to report in.”

“How’re you going to get off–planet? Spaceport’s in Tarthe, that’s halfway around the planet!”

“I’ll call for a pick–up,” said Kay moodily. “Someone in the village should have an off–planet setup. They’ll evacuate me.”

“Will they? They didn’t seem to want to come for you before.”

“They will,” stressed Kay. “That was a specific set of unique circumstances. It’s a simple matter of going to the village and contacting them; they’ll be by to pick me up soon.”

“If that’s true,” said Payl. “Then why didn’t you do that when you were stranded?”

“I don’t know. I was waiting for them to come,” said Kay softly. “I was so sure they would.”

The truck drove on through the dusty flatness.

They pulled into what passed for a town, a cluster of pre–fab buildings grouped around moisture–collection stations.

“You go make your call,” said Payl. “I can bring you back home after, if you want.”

“No, thank you. I’ll wait here,” said Kay.

“Yeah, I understand that,” said Payl. Her constant smile flagged a little. “It’s been good to talk to you. I’m sorry Jassalan acted like she did.”

“I… I’m sorry about your wife,” said Kay.

Payl nodded. “Yeah. Hey… Dees was big on making her own choices. Even if part of you is her, she’d want you to do what’s right for you. Okay?”

“Thank you for picking me up,” was all Kay could think of to say to that.

Payl’s smile grew wide again. “You’re welcome! Find the rain!”

Kay must have looked puzzled, because Payl added, “That’s what we say when we hope someone gets lucky. There’s never rain!”

With that, Payl roared out of the village, and Kay was alone again.

She found her way to the store/comm shack and asked the man at the counter about an off–planet communications system. He glared at her; she couldn’t hide what she was, or her Sovene Army markings.

“I can pay,” she said hurriedly. She removed the currency she kept for emergencies. It seemed thin and paltry, but the storekeeper’s eyes widened.

“It’s expensive,” he warned. “Very expensive.”

She thought, then removed one of the sensors from her leg. It was full of valuable electronics and a few precious metals, even if it wouldn’t work without her input. He frowned, but he pointed the way to a console in a booth. She went inside and located the code for Sector 15 Command in her file system.

Her fingers hesitated.

Thirty–seven days in the heat and dust. Thirty–seven days of waiting patiently next to the rotting corpses of her friends, her systems damaged, her long–distance voice silent.

Thirty–seven days of being utterly alone for the first time in her life.

Why didn’t you come for me?

There was a knock on the outside of the booth. “I’m using this,” she said.

“Come out of there,” said a voice she didn’t recognize. “Now.”

She scanned and found six humans, all armed. They’d come quickly from the street and the back of the store.

She could fight, she could probably hurt them badly enough to escape, but what was the point?

Kay stepped out of the booth, hands raised.

They were going to kill her; she knew it with that cold, absolute certainty. There was no escape. Their leader, a man named Bolus, had ordered her tied her up in the back of the store with ropes and metal bonds generating electromagnetic fields to dampen her electricals. They’d been prepared.

Bolus sat on a chair in front of her. They’d kept her waiting for hours before he came back to see her. She saw only death when she looked at him. He was young, with beady, hate–filled eyes and a bushy beard worn in showy defiance of Sovene fashion and hygiene.

“So you’re a spy,” said Bolus. “Sovenes are coming back. They promised they wouldn’t, but here you are.”

“No,” she said, her voice badly slurred from her bonds’ interference. “I was part of a unit sent out before the evacuation. We were caught by a bomb.”

Bolus laughed. “One of mine, I hope. Good! Dead Sovenes, everybody’s happy. So what, you just waited? Like a good little drone? Ha! I bet you’ll just sit there while we peel you apart.”

“I have no technology you can use,” said Kay. “My systems are integrated; they won’t work without my brain.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” said Bolus. “We’ll take you apart because we can. And because it’s all the justice we’ll ever see from the Sovenes.”

“Justice,” repeated Kay dubiously.

“Yes, justice!” said Bolus, suddenly angry. “For Gorodan, and for Yellow Sands! There were children there! My brother was there.”

Kay had been at Yellow Sands, not long after. She pictured the long field in her mind, and the blood flecks on the prison wall they hadn’t quite been able to wash away.

But she also remembered such kindness. Soldiers giving kids the last of their rations, her unit taking in a family for a week, building schools and roads and sewers… she remembered that, too.

“It’s… complicated,” she said helplessly.

“Sure,” said Bolus.

“You’d be just like us,” said Kay, trying one last desperate tactic.

“I know,” said Bolus grimly. “Like you said. Complicated.” He opened the door, and his people filed in. The shopkeeper was among them.

“We’re ready,” said one.

“Good.” Bolus turned back to Kay. “It’ll be in the square out there.” He jerked his head at the window. “It’s no small thing to kill a Sovene Synthetic. We’ll put your armor up around the village, so people know not to mess with me and mine.”

There were nods all around.

“You’ll serve a purpose,” said a woman. “The provisional government is useless; criminal gangs and warlords are everywhere. When you left, you left anarchy. We need to be safe.”

“I could keep you safe better if I was alive,” slurred Kay.

“I doubt it,” said Bolus fiercely. “And even if so, who cares? I’m the head man around here now, and what I say goes. You’re gonna get dismantled. Is that death for you? Or are you already dead? Huh. Only the Sovenes would dig up the dead and make them fight.”

The light was bright, worse thanks to the magnetic fields dampening her vision.

“You scared?” Bolus taunted, as they strapped her to a pole. “Mighty Sovene! You scared?”

“Yes,” said Kay truthfully, her voice disintegrating into static.

The crowd murmured as Bolus’s people brought plasma cutters to take her apart, one slice at a time.

She tried to replay good memories. But they turned into bloody fields, stone prison walls, and so much else.

“I’m… sorry,” she said to one of them.

He stepped back a pace, and looked at his companion.

“I can’t do this,” he said, shutting down the plasma cutter and dropping it. “Look at her, just sitting there…”

“Damn it!” said Bolus, picking up the plasma cutter. “It has to be done! We have to be strong! The Curvatene boys will come through here and kill everybody if we’re not strong enough!” He tried to hand the cutter back to the man. “Do it. Make it quick and painless. Remember, it’s just a machine. It doesn’t care if it’s alive or dead.”

“I care,” said Kay. The words were barely audible. Only the man and Bolus heard them.

Bolus sighed and raised the cutter himself. He switched it on, and it hummed menacingly to life.

But at that moment there was a thunderous blast and the roar of an engine, and Kay saw Jassalan’s head over the sea of faces. She was riding in the back of the truck, manning a huge mounted gun. Payl was driving, and Liss and Yago leaned out the windows, rifles in hand. “Get back!” Jassalan hollered as the crowd parted. “Go on! Bolus, get away from her!”

“Well,” said Bolus. “Always knew you’d turn back to the Sovenes in the end, Jassalan.”

“They abandoned her,” said Jassalan. “You can’t just kill her in cold blood! She’s done nothing to you.”

“She’s got no blood! And she’s no innocent, you know that. The Sovenes are all guilty!”

Jassalan shook her head. “Get away from her, or I blow you to bits.”

Bolus gave her a cocky grin. “Yeah?” He strode up to the vehicle, arms spread. “Go ahead.”

The village took a collective breath.

Jassalan shrugged and blew him to bits.

“I think that’s got it,” said Liss, tightening a bolt and running a scanner over the new connection. “How’s it feel?”

“Serviceable,” said Kay.

Jassalan stood in the kitchen door, nodding. “Good work.”

They’d scrounged the parts out of the village’s salvage yard during the aftermath. Liss, who was some sort of mechanical genius, had managed to cobble together enough old electronics to mend Kay’s broken long–distance communications equipment. It took weeks and she’d grumped the whole time, but by the time she was done she would wink at Kay when she thought no one else was looking.

When Kay tried to thank Jassalan for saving her, she only shrugged and said, “Payl likes you, she ran home to get us as soon as she found out what was going to happen. I couldn’t just let them kill you.”

Liss had pointed out wryly that she’d killed Bolus, and Jassalan sighed. “It’s never simple,” she said at last, her eyes heavy with something that might have been regret. The matter dropped.

“So, you’re set,” said Liss. “You can call off–planet. It’s all connected back up. You can call for rescue, get off this dirtball.”

“Though you don’t have to,” said Payl. “If you don’t want.”

Kay thought of the sequence that would open the channel. Payl’s smile was tight. Jassalan looked away.

Kay pondered that sequence. She could go home. She could see the Army again, have a mission again.

She glanced at Payl, then at Jassalan. The Army hadn’t come back for her.

But these people had.

“It’s… not working,” Kay lied. “I can’t get through. Maybe it’s not strong enough.”

“Well,” said Jassalan, not buying that for a second. “You’ll just have to stay here until we fix it better.”

There was a soft rustling sound on the roof, and Kay glanced outside. Big raindrops had begun to fall from the sky.

“Rain!” shouted Payl, running past. “Rain!”

Liss scrambled up and followed Payl outside.

Jassalan and Kay were left alone.

“I accessed the file,” said Kay softly.

Jassalan held up her hand. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I don’t want to know.”

“But—”

“No,” said Jassalan, and her smile was genuine and warm. “You’re welcome here no matter who you were. All right? Now… go help with the collectors, Kay. It’s raining.”

Kay ran outside to help Payl and Liss deploy the collectors. Kay felt each drop rain on the skin of her face and the metal of her arms.

“You brought the rain! You brought the rain!” whooped Payl, face lit up with joy.

And, for a fleeting moment, Kay was utterly certain that she had.

Contractual Obligation ^{James L. Cambias}

BLUE SIX AND THE REST of the grunts power up to battle–ready at T–minus fourteen hours. They don’t need much lead time before action; even if the squad’s fully shut down it takes them less than ten minutes to get operational. No, the extra time isn’t for the grunts, it’s for the officer.

Captain Yamada’s in the fridge. He’s been in there since the space freighter left the last neutral station at L5, a hundred days ago. It takes three hours just to raise his body temperature to normal, another couple of hours for muscle stimulation. Releasing some fluids and taking in others. Cleaning off the outer layer. It’s not until T–minus seven hours that Yamada steps through the pressure membrane into the embrace of his armor.

In battle dress, the officer looks almost like one of the grunts. They’re a mixed bunch anyway. Blue One’s a superheavy class, two metric tons of armor and power plant wrapped around a hypervelocity rail gun and a thousand–round magazine. Blue Two and Three are standard heavies, armed with autofire grenade launchers and weighing in at just over three hundred kilos each. Four and Five are low–profile scuttlers, only fifty kilos, with caseless submachine guns and extra limbs tipped with multitools. Blue Six is a point–defense specialist, with twin lasers and an elaborate sensor suite—which also makes it the electronic–warfare unit and primary communications node by default. All the grunts share a single distributed intelligence, but at any given time most of it’s running on processors inside Blue Six.

When he’s functional and suited up, Yamada runs through the list of mission parameters one last time. He toggles the rules of engagement settings from “WEAPONS FREE” to “HUMAN SAFE.”

That gets the squad’s attention. “That isn’t in the contract, Captain.”

“Which means I’m free to decide. I want to make this as bloodless as possible.”

“Yes, Captain.” The squad can do non–lethal. It means they can still shoot other robots, and that’s the important thing. If you have to rely on human troops, you’ve lost the battle.

Six hours out, the freighter’s eyes can see the target: Anfa Habitat. From the freighter’s angle it looks like a dark flower against the Sun’s disk. Anfa Habitat is a giant sphere a kilometer across, with six big solar panels stretching out from the equator. The docking hub’s down at the “dark pole” of the sphere, with four docking tubes sticking out at right angles. Beyond the docking hub, a long boom stretches a hundred meters or so into the sphere’s shadow, with big radiator fins running down each side and the backup power reactor at the far end. Anfa orbits the Sun sixty degrees ahead of Venus, so the radiators are glowing bright infrared as they dump the habitat’s excess heat.

Anfa control takes over the freighter soon after—or at least Yamada allows them to think they have. The controllers inside Anfa do a good job. There’s a hard braking burn to shift the freighter from its transfer orbit to match vectors with the habitat, and then some short burns and rotations to line up with the docking tube. There’s no voice chatter from the controllers; according to the manifest, this is a load of humanitarian supplies.

Docking clamps thump together right at T–minus zero, and now it’s time to move. Yamada pops the external cargo hatch—not the one connected to the docking tube—and the whole squad goes out onto the hull, moving fast. Blue One takes up a position behind the hatch to provide covering fire; Six joins it to act as spotter. The other four surge forward along the outside of the docking tube, followed by Yamada.

Having the officer out on the front line is part of the plan, but the squad thinks it’s a bad idea. A battle’s no place for humans. The captain could keep his fragile biological butt parked back in the relative safety of the freighter and stay in the loop by telepresence. But this job requires some diplomacy, and faceless killing machines are still getting the hang of that.

Blue Six scans the battlespace and picks out possible targets. The biggest danger is Anfa’s main defense lasers, located at the tips of three of the solar panels. The lasers can vaporize one of the grunts with a single shot, which is why the squad is keeping the metal docking tube between themselves and the habitat. But Anfa might have free–flying drones with laser mirrors, so Six watches the sky for anything moving.

There! A small shape moving against the stars. It’s dark, which puts it in the shadow of the habitat. Close, then. The squad’s multiple eyes triangulate, and Blue One takes aim.

Yamada’s orders are clear: no combat of any kind until he gives the word. Don’t let the enemy know there’s a battle going on until it’s won. So Blue Six keeps watching the drone, pinging alerts at the officer to make sure he sees it too.

More targets! Four maintenance drones come scuttling along the docking tube from the hub.

“Engage engage engage!” Yamada orders. “Damn.”

Before the captain has time to inhale again after speaking, Blue One hits the mirror drone with a chunk of depleted uranium going three kilometers per second, and Blue Two through Five each blow a maintenance bot to twinkling fragments. Six scans every surface in sight, looking for cameras and blinding them.

Now it’s time to get fast. While the debris clouds are still expanding, the squad sprints up the tube to the docking hub. The officer must be juicing his sluggish biological nervous system with something, because he’s only a second behind.

The maintenance drones came out of a hatch at the docking hub, where the four tubes meet. It’s a typical membrane, but an armored door is swinging shut as they reach it. Blue One grabs the edge of the aluminum door, and for three long seconds there’s a contest between the big bot and the motor in the door hinge, but sheer power wins out and the hatch jerks open again.

The team goes through the membrane faster than it can seal around them, and the habitat loses a couple of cubic meters of air before it regenerates. Six identifies and destroys more eyes on the inside walls. Two covers the hatch in case someone else comes at them from outside. The rest of the team launch themselves across the inside of the docking hub to secure the connection to the habitat.

Another metal hatch has already sealed off that direction, but that’s perfectly fine with the squad. If they can’t get into the main habitat, nothing can come out, either. One and Three cover that approach. Yamada and the two smallest team members head for the thick conduit that runs through the center of the docking hub, connecting the habitat to the radiator fin beyond. Four and Five remove the casing and expose the heavily insulated pipes inside. Two of the pipes are dazzlingly hot on infrared, even inside layers of fiberglass and foil.

Four and Five install the squad’s insurance policy: modest demolition charges, just powerful enough to sever the coolant lines. All the pipes get two, including the backups. Now if the officer says a particular command—or if his suit stops sending a particular code series to the bombs—they’ll go off, and Anfa Habitat won’t have any way to shed waste heat. Thirteen thousand people will slowly cook in the relentless fury of the Sun.

The squad has downloads of Anfa’s emergency plans. It’ll be a race between work drones and thermodynamics. The squad estimates at least ten percent of the human inhabitants will die, and there’s a small but non–trivial chance that all of them will.

The Anfa forces have assembled outside. A trio of drones dive in through the membrane at the same instant that a shaped charge turns the center of the steel hatch into a jet of molten metal that hits Blue Three right in the ammunition magazine. Some of the grenades in Three’s magazine cook off, blowing the bot apart.

For a moment the squad becomes a group of autonomous individuals while the group AI reconfigures itself. When it does, the squad can’t plan quite as far ahead and its guesses are a little less precise.

Blue One fires a hail of depleted uranium through the space where Three had been standing, shredding whatever’s on the other side of the hatch. Six blinds the drones coming in the other way, and Two finishes them off with sticky grenades.

Captain Yamada’s broadcasting on all the voice channels. “Anfa, I will destroy your cooling system if you don’t stand down at once!”

There’s a pause, and then a human voice comes over one of the channels. “All right. We’ll cease fire.”

“Understood,” says Yamada, though the squad’s still ready to slag anything that tries to get into the hub. “I’m a licensed contractor working for the Deimos Community. This is a legal military operation. All I want is one person. Give me Dr. Julius Wassel. I have orders to remove him from this habitat. He will not be harmed.”

There’s a pause of about a minute. “We can’t let you take Dr. Wassel against his will.”

“I’m not leaving without him.”

“Even if you do sabotage the radiator, you won’t get away from Anfa alive,” the other human points out.

“I’d rather end this with no loss of life at all,” says Yamada. “Give me Wassel, I’ll leave, and nobody gets hurt.”

“We can’t just hand him over,” says the voice. “Dr. Wassel is a citizen and a shareholder. He’s got rights.”

“How about you let me talk to him directly?”

There’s a long delay, and then a new voice comes on. “This is Julius Wassel speaking. Are you really prepared to commit mass murder?”

“I was hired to do a job, Dr. Wassel,” says Yamada. “I’m trying to use minimum force to get it done. This is a legal military operation. Would you rather my squad tried to fight through the habitat to find you? If you come along with me I promise you will not be harmed.”

“Where do you plan to take me?”

“I can’t reveal that. But you’ll be treated extremely well. My employers think your research is very important, and they want to help you continue your work. I’m sure you’ll have more resources than you do here.”

“I came to Anfa to get away from all that,” says Wassel. “Both sides in this ridiculous war are repulsive to me. Ideological fanatics fighting amoral exploiters, with mercenaries doing the dirty work.”

“I’m just a contractor,” says Yamada. “Look, I know they’ve probably asked you to keep me talking while they fab up more weapons, so I’m afraid I have to cut this short. I’m starting a ten–minute timer on my bombs now. If Dr. Wassel comes down here before they go off, I’ll shut them off and leave in peace.”

The captain cuts the link and rearranges the squad. The two open hatches are sealed only by pressure membranes, and just about anything could punch through that. He puts Four and Five to work pulling up wall and floor panels to obstruct any line of sight through the hatches. Six watches the door into space, while the other two cover the link to the main habitat.

The timer ticks down to five minutes, then four, then three. The squad’s ability to predict human behavior is limited, but elementary game theory suggests that once the coolant lines are severed and the habitat’s temperature starts to rise, there’s absolutely nothing to prevent Anfa’s lasers from vaporizing the captain and the grunts. That’s a known risk.

The count’s at one minute forty seconds when there’s a knock on the partition blocking the hatchway into the main habitat. Yamada sends Four to have a peek. Two humans in skinsuits are floating just this side of the membrane.

“I only want Dr. Wassel,” says Yamada.

“Pando, it’s me. Gradara,” says one of the humans.

For a moment the officer’s bio readings go nuts, and the squad considers the possibility the enemy has managed to hit him with some kind of biochemical agent. But before the squad can shift into autonomous mode he drops back within normal parameters.

“Come in, both of you,” says the captain. He halts the timer.

The squad lets them pass the partition, and Six looks inside both of them with backscatter X–rays and sound pulses. You can learn a lot about someone that way. Wassel’s a male human, with too much abdominal fat and an artificial pancreas. Gradara’s a female with unusual muscle density; all the bones in one leg plus a forearm and some ribs are carbon–fiber rebuilds. Her bio readings are a lot less elevated than Wassel’s.

“I thought you were dead,” says Yamada.

“I wanted a new start. There were people I didn’t want following me,” she says.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here, Pando. I’m a shareholder and a citizen. Back when Earth and Deimos started this epic pissing contest I decided to get as far away from the war zone as I could. Anfa looked like a good place. Low strategic value, underpopulated—or at least it was when I got here. Now we’ve got more people than the place was built to support. Thirteen thousand people will cook if you set off those charges.”

The officer is silent for nearly a second. Then, “What about you, Dr. Wassel? Are you ready to leave?”

“If I have no alternative,” says Wassel.

“See?” Captain Yamada tells the woman called Gradara. “He’s perfectly willing. Nobody has to get hurt.”

“I’ve got a counter–offer,” says Gradara. “Stay here. Anfa can buy out your contract.”

Yamada takes a couple of seconds to answer. “What would I do here? I’m a soldier.”

“There may be other raids. Obviously we need better defenses. You could help set them up.”

“Are you part of the deal?”

“No promises, Pando.”

Just then the space freighter’s antenna picks up a transmission and bounces it to the squad. The message is from Deimos, and the authentications check out. The group mind judges it significant and passes it along to the officer. Captain Yamada spends ten seconds reading it, and his bio readings go nuts again for a couple of seconds.

“KINETIC WARHEAD STRIKE ON YOUR POSITION TIME ON TARGET 1 HOUR.”

Evidently the owners back inside Deimos have decided to get serious. Maybe Wassel’s important enough to be worth denying to anyone else. Or maybe Anfa’s pissed them off some other way. It doesn’t affect the tactical situation, so the squad doesn’t waste any more time thinking about it.

Yamada seems very concerned, though. He asks the woman, “Does Anfa have any other spacecraft? Anything with interplanetary range?”

“We used to have a couple of interplanetary shuttles, but Earth grabbed one and blew up the other. Why?”

“I want you to come with me,” he says.

“And what will you blow up if I refuse?”

“No demands. I want you to come with me. When we were together, back on Luna—were you happy?”

“I was very happy,” she says. “But I was tired of being a gun for hire. I was ready to quit. And you weren’t.”

“You never said anything.”

“I didn’t need to. I could see it. You weren’t ready then, and look at you now: you’re a successful contractor—are you ready to give it up now? Shut down your squad, disarm the bombs and stay here?”

“No,” says Yamada. He switches to a private channel, but the squad can still hear his end over the command link.

“Can you fab up a hibernation chamber? You can ride in that.” Pause. “It’s not safe for you to stay here. I can’t tell you why.” Pause. “You need to leave now. Come with me.”

He switches back to the squad. “What’s the status on our vehicle? Can we make it to Deimos with an extra human on board?”

“No,” says the squad. “Mission profile is zero–margin. There’s only enough life support consumables to get you and Wassel to Deimos.”

“Can my suit keep me in stasis long enough to reach Deimos?”

“No. It’s more than seven months in transit. Your suit’s only rated for sixty hours.”

“What if we hook my suit up to the ship’s systems?”

“Daily failure probability tops fifty percent in less than a month.”

Yamada switches back to his private link with Gradara. “You need to get a hibernation chamber down here in half an hour, and enough consumables for seven months.” The squad can’t hear her answer, but Yamada’s stress levels rise even higher. “They must have one somewhere! In the hospital, maybe?”

Fifty minutes left.

Wassel speaks up again. “Captain Yamada, I’m not sure what’s going on. Would you rather take Ms. Gradara with you instead of me?”

“No! I have to get you to Deimos. That’s the mission. I’m sorry, Doctor, but you’re coming no matter what. I’m just trying to find a way to bring her as well.”

“Are you collecting Anfa shareholders?”

Yamada ignores him and switches back to the link with the squad. “Can the spacecraft reach any inhabited body or habitat with three humans aboard?”

After a moment’s calculation the squad replies, “Adding another hibernation unit increases the mass too much to reach Deimos. The best trajectory puts us at the Earth leading Trojan point. That requires a gravity assist from Venus and takes more than two years. Note that the leading Trojan habitats are hostile, and may not exist by the time we reach them. That would constitute a mission failure.”

“Is there any way we can get off this hab with three people?”

“Captain, that’s outside the mission parameters. You’re supposed to acquire Dr. Wassel and evacuate. Ms. Gradara isn’t part of the plan.”

“I’m not leaving Gradara here. Consider the plan amended.”

Captain Yamada’s stress levels are still rising. He talks to the woman again, and he forgets to encrypt the connection. “You’ve got to make them fab you a hibernation unit. We need it in—shit, less than forty–five minutes.”

“Pando, I’ve got a good life here. I don’t want to come with you.”

“You’ve got to come! This place is going to be a cloud of debris in less than an hour.”

That’s a breach of operational security, and Blue Six starts area jamming to keep Gradara and Wassel from communicating with anyone outside the docking hub.

“You can’t do that!” says Wassel.

“It’s not my decision. The kill vehicles are already inbound and I don’t have any way to stop them. I’m trying to get the three of us out of here alive. Do either of you have any ideas?”

Gradara isn’t saying anything. She’s trying to link up with the station network, but Six isn’t going to let that happen.

“Captain, you’re no longer following the mission plan. You’re showing signs of psychological incapacity,” the squad tells Yamada.

“I’m fine!” Yamada takes a deep breath and tells his armor to hit him with a dose of tranquilizer. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take these two humans back to the spacecraft and put them in the hibernation units. I’ll ride in my suit; I’ll take the risk of failure. Now let’s get going!”

The squad goes into action. The group AI invokes medical override and orders Yamada’s armor to knock him out with a sedative. Four and Five grab Wassel and head for the exit. Blue One covers them.

The officer is clearly not fit for command.

One decision left to make. Normally it would be simple, but there are conflicting orders involved, and the squad wants to comply with Yamada’s last instructions if possible. “Ms. Gradara, in your opinion will Captain Yamada suffer any permanent psychological impairment as a result of your death?”

She looks right at Three, which is still covering her with a grenade launcher, then at Yamada floating unconscious in his armor. A couple of seconds go by before she answers. “Yes,” she says. “I don’t think he’ll get over it.” Her pulse and respiration are steady.

Three and Six escort her to the spacecraft and help her into the hibernation unit. They leave Yamada behind, floating unconscious in his armor. The squad dumps all of its memories into the spacecraft; then the bots shut down for good. Undocking is perfectly smooth, and nobody gets lasered. The spacecraft is a thousand kilometers away when the kill vehicles hit. Thirteen thousand bodies spill into vacuum.

A successful mission, under the terms of the contract.

Gradara’s a little muzzy from the hibernation drugs kicking in when she contacts the squad before going down for a seven–month nap. “Hey, you guys looking for a new officer? I used to be pretty good.”

“Are there any emotional or psychological issues which might impair your effectiveness?”

“No,” she says. “Not anymore.”

The Wasp Keepers ^{Mark Jacobsen}

HAMZA HAD JUST FINISHED PUMPING gas into a fruit truck when he jerked upright and swatted the back of his neck with one palm. He whirled around, eyes bulging, searching frantically for his Wasp before his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed sideways onto the hot pavement. The fruit truck was already pulling away. The driver didn’t stop.

Um Hamza didn’t see it happen, but that was how Tariq described it through his breathless sobs, the screen door still banging on its hinges behind him. She had been sitting at her desk composing an email on her phone. When Tariq finished, he threw his arms around her and cried into her neck like a child. Um Hamza set the phone down carefully and sat and stared into the distance, heart beating savagely.

She had lived this moment so many times in her nightmares, both sleeping and waking. How could she not? Even without war, there were so many ways it could come: a neighbor backing out of a driveway, an aspirated grape, a toppled bookcase, a tangled bed sheet, an electrical outlet, a few centimeters of water in an unattended bath.

For Um Hamza, it was immeasurably worse. There were government tanks, air strikes, roadside bombs, poison gas, cruise missiles, collapsing buildings, malnourishment, disease, kidnappings, Farsi–speaking trainers with rocket launchers and machine guns. And of course, there were the masked militiamen who had executed her brother, burned their home, and driven them across the Jordanian border into the Za’atri refugee camp. So when she’d held that warm bundle for the first time in the camp clinic and looked into her son’s wrinkled pink face, all she could think about was his death. For two weeks, depression kept her in bed. Her mother changed Hamza’s diapers, rocked him, played with him and brought him to her for mechanical feedings. Hamza’s seventeenth birthday was like a sentencing. When the card arrived from the Syrian Transitional Authority, she sobbed for hours. It still sat on her desk, a wretched, superstitious totem that she was terrified to destroy. Birthday cake and candles on one side; on the other, a happy, smiling, cartoon bee. FOR YOUR PROTECTION, the card said in Arabic above a QR code and an explanation of “What You Need to Know.” When the Wasp itself buzzed into the olive grove a few days later, she watched it for hours, shaking feverishly. For weeks she wouldn’t let Hamza outdoors without her. She even walked him down to the gas station and back, to his burning shame, their two Wasps buzzing along in trail. It was inevitable, she knew. And she was right.

She put an arm around Tariq’s shoulders and walked outside with him. Her Wasp sat on a sunny spot of the porch railing, recharging. When it saw her it fluttered skyward, an obscene little blot against the blue sky.

As they walked the kilometer down to the gas station, she could see the cars pulling off the highway, the men running.

When she came around from the back of the gas station, she saw her husband kneeling on the pavement, muttering to God and rocking their limp boy in his arms. A ring of bystanders stood around them, whispering and praying. Uncle Fouad stood among them, red–faced, yelling into his cell–phone. Something about a fruit truck.

The Wasp lay on the ground, broken, twitching. Hamza must have caught it with his final slap. A machine, gray and small, muscle wire supporting insectile wings that were solar cells, coiled around a microprocessor and communications link and of course the toxin pouch and stinger. She raised a foot to grind it beneath her heel, but then considered how her own Wasp might react and gently placed her foot back on the ground.

She looked back to Hamza. Her beautiful, sweet boy, undiminished by seventeen years of poverty and war. Her boy, who had spent his summer turning wrenches and changing spark plugs with his father and grandfather in the auto shop. Who went door–to–door each Ramadan, on his own initiative, collecting donations for the Islamic Relief Mission. Who once sobbed with guilt when he shot a stray cat with a pellet gun, back when the possession of such things was not a death sentence. Dear, sweet Hamza.

She realized there was a separate group crowding around the doors of the convenience store on the far side of the pumps. She blindly grabbed at Uncle Fouad’s arm. He pulled away from the cell phone for a moment.

She pointed at the store. “What…?”

“It’s your father. They got him too. I’m sorry.”

Her legs gave out, and she sank to the pavement beside her husband. She had held herself together only because she had rehearsed this dreaded theater so many times in her mind’s eye, but this was a blow she had not seen coming.

She touched Hamza’s cold face and began to scream.

The police were afraid to approach the bodies, as this was an Occupation strike. There was no telling what might provoke another Wasp attack. They masked their fear and incompetence by blowing whistles and barking orders and making half–hearted efforts to clear out the spectators who were shooting video with their mobiles or AR glasses. One officer questioned witnesses, but his questions followed no logical path and he didn’t bother to write down the answers. No, sir, he didn’t do anything threatening. He was pumping gas. Yes, gas. He was filling up a fruit truck.

Ten minutes after the police came, Uncle Fouad’s phone rang. He listened without speaking and hung up. He said, “They took out the fruit truck about five kilometers north of here. Three people.”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Another piece in the puzzle. Above them, their Wasps whirled and danced, glimpsing faces, recording their expressions and judging their body language.

An entourage from the mosque arrived in a rusting blue van. The crowd parted as Hajj Omar disembarked, leaning on a wooden crutch to compensate for the leg he had lost in Homs. A scar divided the right side of his face from top to bottom, running clean through a cloudy gray eye. The crowd fell silent before this presence. He recited the Fatiha and performed the final rites for Hamza and Abu Khalid, and then delivered a sermon which became a blistering tirade against the Syrian Transitional Authority and the Occupation.

Um Hamza left before he was finished. She collapsed into bed and cried until sleep took her.

She woke after sunset, when Abu Hamza climbed into bed and touched her shoulder. She turned brusquely away from him, but he started to cry. Ashamed, she rolled over to touch him. It was dreary sex, sad and distant, a feeble echo of what their marriage had once been. Afterwards they held each other, but even that tenderness lacked intimacy. It was like two strangers holding hands as their crippled plane careened to the earth.

She woke to sunlight and quiet. The entire household was still asleep. She brewed a cup of tea, then went outside to pluck some fresh mint from the garden. She marveled at the serenity of the still–waking world. The olive trees were perfection itself: rows of them standing like sentinels, unmoved by even the faintest of breezes. A single black bird flapped across the sky.

She sat beneath an olive tree and leaned up against the trunk and sipped her tea. This is all she had ever wanted, this moment stretched into a lifetime. Cool mornings and olive trees and silence.

Her Wasp took up station over her.

“Good morning,” she said in English.

The Wasp gave no indication it had heard, but of course it had. It heard everything. Saw everything. Even smelled everything. All that data was aggregated and beamed to the United States and Canada and God knew where else, where it was filtered and analyzed and processed in vast server farms. Intelligent algorithms crunched away, drawing connections, matching words and behavior to pattern libraries, then sent their conclusions before hordes of young analysts sitting in the blue wash of computer screens. Perfect seeing. Perfect knowledge. And, when the wrong two patterns overlapped, perfect death.

He’d been pumping gas. What kind of pattern was that?

She went inside and found a pack of cigarettes in her husband’s jacket. She returned to her shaded spot under the tree and lit up. She smoked three cigarettes while she cruised the social networks on her phone, trying to forget, procrastinating. She’d been a queen in that world, once, back in the heady days when the revolution was young and the future was theirs for the making.

She had been a true believer. She marched with the protestors and shot video and live–tweeted massacres and built a following of more than fifteen thousand people. She made friends with activists and journalists and Middle East experts across the world. When the regime met their protests with war, she redoubled her efforts. And then, when the artillery barrages and the gunmen came to her village and they fled across the border to the Za’atri camp, she blogged everything.

She won prizes. Journalists sought her in person. She struck up an online friendship with a hacker in the Free Syrian Army, and when they discovered weeks later that they were both in the Za’atri camp, the future was written. The pregnancy came first, then a hasty marriage. A few years earlier this would have destroyed her family, but in Za’atri honor and shame were relics. They had never imagined the war would rage for nearly two decades. Never imagined it would end like this, in this frozen horror that was somehow worse than all that had come before. All that history had ground her down to almost nothing.

Her writing output was a lethargic trickle these days, and she was mostly forgotten. Mostly, but not entirely. She still knew people.

She started to compose an email.

It was around five o’clock that evening when Tariq came running to tell her that Wasp Keepers were approaching on the highway. She sent a text to Abu Hamza and Uncle Fouad, who were down at the gas station working, and then went to the bathroom to wash her face and reapply her makeup. When she was finished, she put on her hijab and went out to the porch. The convoy had just turned off the highway. A cluster of dusty children watched mutely from the side of the road, one of them holding a soccer ball under his arm.

The convoy consisted of a mine–resistant Army truck and a silver BMW surrounded by a swarm of Wasps. A squat steamroller the size of a Smart Car preceded the vehicles, feeling for IEDs buried in the road.

There were four soldiers, enveloped in so much armor and gear that the only things recognizably human about them were the square jaws exposed beneath the black goggles. When the first three dismounted, they went right past her and took up positions on the road. The fourth was a captain.

The captain nodded at her, then looked expectantly back to the BMW.

The sole occupant of the car was a Syrian man about her father’s age, dressed in a striped collared shirt and a dusty blue sport coat. AR glasses enveloped his face. He did not immediately get out of the car. His window was rolled down, and Um Hamza could hear that he was on a call, negotiating a price. He drummed one hand on the steering wheel and gesticulated with the other. He looked familiar, so while they all waited, Um Hamza discreetly snapped a photo of him and ran a search. The match was instant. The district police chief.

When he was finally finished, he got out of the car and both he and the captain came forward.

“As–salaam aleykum,” the captain said. He raised his goggles and there was a human face beneath, handsome and blonde and blue–eyed. “Ana kteer aasif likhsarit ibnik wa abooki.”

Um Hamza was impressed that this soldier had learned enough Arabic to say that. She also thought that if he offered any more sympathy for her loss, she would rip out his tongue and shove it down his throat.

The captain said that it would be best to visit the scene of the strike, so they walked down to the gas station, their Wasps a snarled cloud above them. The captain took off his helmet as they walked, a gesture Um Hamza knew was calculated to demonstrate trust, as if the mere act of exposing his sunburned scalp could somehow atone for the death of her boy and her father. By the time they reached the gas station they were pale with dust and the sweat ran down their backs. The captain introduced himself to Abu Hamza and Uncle Fouad, and then they all sat in plastic chairs in the customer service area adjacent to the auto shop while Tariq served Arabic coffee. When they were finished, he stacked the cups and sat down opposite the captain, glaring murderously at him. Um Hamza’s sister–in–law Noor arrived shortly after with a fruit tray and a bowl of dates. Um Hamza took the plate from her and offered it to the captain, and kept insisting until he finally took a single slice of apple. The police chief waved at her dismissively and lit up a cigarette.

“Why did you come?” Um Hamza asked while Noor poured a round of tea.

“You have some friends who really care about you,” everyone heard in a mechanical Arabic dialect. The captain subvocalized in English as a device on his chest translated.

“For God’s sake, turn that thing off,” Um Hamza said. “Which one was it?”

The captain shrugged and touched the device. In English he said, “Logan Keesler ran a story. It got noticed in Washington.”

Um Hamza translated for her family. “So they sent you to pacify me?”

“I just came to talk,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot and distant. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “You have the right to know why your son was targeted.”

“He was seventeen,” Um Hamza said.

The captain opened a camouflage bag at his side and handed them each a pair of AR glasses. Everyone turned them over in their hands suspiciously before putting them on. The captain said, “We know your family has been in the auto service industry for a long time. A whole chain of gas stations and auto shops before the war, right? You lost everything at the start of the war, but after three years in Za’atri, the three brothers returned home and got back into the business. It’s pretty remarkable you were able to finance all this.”

Um Hamza translated. Fouad glared at the captain.

The captain rose and stepped outside to survey the gas station. He said, “You made some interesting friends.”

They rose to join him so they could see what he was looking at.

A row of beat–up pickup trucks and vans was parked in front of the little masjid where customers could pray during gas stops. Gathered outside the door was a crowd of grim, thickly bearded Salafists toting handguns and AK–47s. The imagery was perfectly positioned and scaled, but it was black and white and heavily pixilated. While she watched, a younger clone of Uncle Fouad appeared and embraced one of the Islamists. They exchanged kisses on their cheeks.

“They were fighting the regime,” Fouad said in Arabic. “They just came to pray.”

“Understandable,” the captain said without missing a beat. He was probably still receiving machine translations. “But you spent hours with them. And they came a lot. Even after you knew they were pledged to al–Qa’eda, even after they toppled the regime and created their own government and you saw what they were capable of. Your brother Abu Khalid led prayers for them. He sat for hours with them teaching them about Islam. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say he was a spiritual mentor of sorts.”

“He taught anybody who would listen,” Um Hamza protested. “He thought they were misguided, maybe not even Muslim, but he thought the answer to that was more Islam, more truth.”

“And that’s why he smuggled weapons for them?”

Um Hamza broke into tears. The captain knew so much, he knew everything, and yet he understood nothing. It was all wrong, it was all cameras and robots and a string of connected dots that added up to something different from the wretched story they had lived.

She remembered when the Islamists first turned up at their gas station. Uncle Fouad, as it turned out, had worked some kind of deal with a mujahideen group in the Za’atri camp. They’d needed to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Syria, which meant they needed someone who knew vehicles and logistics. Fouad had acquired startup capital, bought the gas station, and used his contacts on both side of the border to build up a logistics network to import auto parts into Syria. Auto parts, that is, with a few bonus packages in the mix.

It had seemed a small enough thing, the kind of shadow bargaining on which survival depended in those violent days, but that deal took on a life of its own. The gas station got a reputation. Anti–regime fighters converged there, both the moderate types who’d been trained by the Americans in Jordan and the sneering Salafists who were just as likely to kill insufficiently pious Sunnis as they were regime soldiers. At first they negotiated business deals. Then they asked favors. Then they made demands. Uncle Fouad said no precisely one time. That experiment ended with Uncle Hatim, the third brother, dead in a ditch after torture by power drill.

That was the partnership Um Hamza remembered. Angry, bearded men. Guns. Terror. Extortion. But the captain walked them through his own narrative of these events, which unfolded before their eyes in a hurricane of light and color, the quality of the visuals improving sharply as the years raced by. Here was a full–service gas station that was a virtual safe house for terrorists and a key node in an arms smuggling ring. That’s what the Wasps saw. What the fusion centers assessed. Seventeen years of fear, condensed into one storyline, missing context and everything that comprised the normal fabric of their lives. Yes, they’d made terrible compromises, but hadn’t everyone? What choice did they have?

“But Hamza had nothing to do with this,” Um Hamza said.

“Three months ago your son took possession of an SA–14, an advanced MANPAD for shooting down airplanes. He was to hold it for safekeeping. He stashed it right there, in the back of your parts storeroom.”

Fouad swore in Arabic and wiped his face with one hand.

The transaction unfolded before their eyes, a living recreation of the past. An old gray Mazda pulling up to the pump. Hamza leaning in the window and talking to the driver. The driver extending a wad of bills. Hamza looking around, then signaling the driver to pull into the auto shop. The visuals were flawless. Um Hamza fought the urge to run to him, to embrace him, to plead with him to stop.

“He just wanted money,” Um Hamza said, the tears running down her cheeks now. “He probably didn’t even know what it was.”

“He knew. Later he showed Tariq.”

Um Hamza shot a look at Tariq, who shook his head violently. He was crying.

“Yesterday, a customer arrived to claim the package,” the captain said.

Here came the fruit truck, rumbling up to the gas pumps belching greasy black smoke. Hamza went to meet it, oblivious to the fact that he had only minutes to live.

The captain said, “It was an active plot. The Islamists intended to use the weapon a few hours later, when the Syrian president returned from Paris. The Transitional Authority acted.”

The captain slowly took off his glasses and tucked them carefully in the bag, as if sobered by the tragedy of what he had just explained. “I am genuinely sorry for the loss of your loved ones, but you brought this on yourselves. This is the life you raised Hamza into. When he came of age, he made some terrible choices of his own.”

“You know nothing about him!”

“On the contrary, we know everything about him.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?" Um Hamza cried.

“What? ”

“War. ”

“I know about war. ”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Not what you’re doing. I mean war. The things you have to do. The choices you have to make. The consequences if you don’t. The fear. ” She wiped her eyes. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. ”

The captain frowned and looked out at the horizon for a long time, as if lost in some terrible memory. Despite all his gear, armor, and the cloud of Wasps ready to make war on his behalf, he looked exhausted beyond his years, even a little fragile. Um Hamza wondered how many times he had had this conversation.

“Just once,” he said softly, still looking to the sunburnt horizon, “I want to find one Syrian who is grateful for what we’ve done for this country. What we’ve sacrificed, the friends we’ve lost. You’ve been at war almost as long as I’ve been alive, and we’ve stopped the cycle. Do you realize how incredible that is?”

“You killed my father and my son.”

“They chose to fight,” the captain said, shrugging. “I don’t get it. I wish someone could explain it to me. How many more decades of war do you want?”

“We want to be free,” said Abu Hamza.

“You are free, as long as you don’t fight. No one dies unless he chooses to. There’s no more strategic bombing, no more ground occupation, no more drone strikes, no more collateral damage. It’s just… awareness. Knowledge. Insurgency is impossible. We’ve freed you from violence, given you the best chance in years for a peaceful new future. I don’t understand why you can’t accept that.”

Peace? she thought, looking at the police chief, who had wandered off and was negotiating some new deal on his expensive imported AR headset. This is peace?

“I am sorry for your loss,” the captain said “This was a needless tragedy. I hope you’ll think long and hard about the choices that lie ahead. You still have one son. I pray to God that you will choose a future of peace, in sha’ Allah.”

The captain put on his helmet and nodded to the police chief that it was time to leave.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said.

That night they sat on the patio, drinking coffee and smoking sullenly. Their Wasps hovered above them in the warm orb cast by the porch light. It would have been safer to stay inside, but it was a pleasant night and they refused to be intimidated. There was something thrilling about sitting in front of those watchful eyes, putting their hatred on open display. In a world where resistance was impossible, even talking was an act of courage.

“That police chief,” Fouad said between angry puffs on the nargeelah. “That fucking BMW.”

He was drunk. Um Hamza didn’t know when or how he’d achieved that feat, as he never drank in front of the family, but he’d done a thorough job of it.

“You know him?” Um Hamza asked.

“Yeah, I know him,” Fouad said, the smoke pouring forth from his lips, as if he was trying to excise the very memory of the police chief from his body. “You two haven’t asked the question, but I know you’re dying to. Why the hell is it Fouad that’s sitting here smoking and drinking instead of your father?”

It was true. She had wondered exactly that. Her father had been a simple man, kind and pious and respectable, without a hint of guile. Fouad was the shrewd empire builder who had turned an auto parts supply chain into a profitable arms smuggling network.

“About six months ago, that police chief came by the gas station. The Occupation was sharing all its intel with him. He knew everything. You know why he came by? He wanted a cut. To keep quiet. I told him no.”

Fouad started to laugh, and swung his head from side to side in exaggerated, drunken disbelief.

“Son a bitch knew how to pay me back,” he said. He raised his coffee cup. “Long live the peaceful new Syria.”

Um Hamza knocked gently on the boys’ door. When she heard nothing, she turned the knob. She stood in the doorway, the light behind her illuminating the shape of Tariq asleep in one bed and the tangled, empty sheets on the other. She studied the sheets, marveling at them. Exactly as Hamza had left them when he rose from bed yesterday.

She knelt beside her living son. He was so different from his brother. Even with all that had happened, Hamza had a natural sweetness to him, a legacy of his grandfather. He loved God. But Tariq hated, and for him life itself was a war. That manifested itself in everything. The rage. The arguments. He often came home bruised and bloody, and refused to say where he had been or what had happened. At least twice, he had sent other boys to the hospital. He needed violence the way he needed air.

Sleep effaced all that, wound the clock back to a time before the war had damaged him. Amazing that her child still lurked in there, after all that he had suffered. It wasn’t his fault, being the way he was. He was a good boy, a strong boy who in a better life would have gone on to do such great things. But here…

In three years they would receive another birthday card, and another Wasp would find its way into their olive grove. One more node would appear in the Occupation’s vast Syrian intelligence matrix. When that happened, Tariq would die. It might be two days or it might be two years, but the boy who couldn’t help fighting in the streets would most certainly fight the Occupation.

If the Occupation did not end, Tariq would die. But it wouldn’t end. It couldn’t. The least relaxation of control would mean chaos.

She thought back to the captain’s words. The Wasp Keepers had ended almost two decades of war. It was nothing short of a miracle, unprecedented in history. Perfect knowledge. Perfect killing. War that was as intimate as a friend sitting next to you, a friend that would protect you from all harm but would also kill you with a kiss if you let slip any hint of treason.

It was hatefully, intolerably perfect.

And yet there were no winners, not even the Occupation. The captain had understood that. He was exhausted and embittered by a war that, for all his impressive ability to control, had not delivered victory. The things that mattered most were still beyond their reach.

If they could not win, that meant they could still lose. The thought electrified her. After that revelation, everything fell into place.

She kissed Tariq on the head. Maybe she could yet save his life.

There was one thing she could still do. One choice they could all make. It was the single choice that eluded the Occupation’s control, and that terrified them.

The rest of the night passed like a dream. For the first time since childhood, she was free. She went to her husband and gave herself to him, not because he was entitled to it but because she chose to. For a few moments she felt something of what she’d once known with this talented young revolutionary in the Za’atri camp. Afterward, while he slept, she wrote letters. Longhand. Beyond the reach of the Occupation. She left them trifolded on her desk, the names written on the back in elegant Arabic calligraphy.

After that she sat outside beneath her olive tree. It was still, and silent, and the stars wheeled freely in the sky as if there had never been a war and war was something altogether inconceivable. The peace she had always wanted. She recalled memories of Hamza, and of Tariq, and of her husband before the war had changed him. Of her father, leading prayers in the gas station masjid for poor refugees with their battered cars, limping their way northward again after the first lull in the fighting.

She sat beneath the tree until the sky began to lighten in the east, and the first cars appeared down on the highway. Then she rose on stiff joints and brushed herself off. One leg had fallen asleep. She hobbled over to the porch, shaking the leg awake again. She had composed the email to Logan Keesler earlier in the night. She sent it now, then propped the phone up on the railing and started a video recording.

She said a few words into the camera. Then she smiled and turned.

Her Wasp stared down at her, a motionless black smear in the sky. The other family Wasps were perched on the railing, charging in the morning sun. Stupid, mindless things. They knew everything and they knew nothing.

She reached into the folds of her robe and withdrew the cigarette lighter and the can of hairspray. With one flick of her wrist, her Wasp was a burning point of brightness in the sheet of flame.

It hadn’t yet hit the ground when the other Wasps converged on her. She felt the hot pricks of the stingers, and a moment later the olive grove spun sideways.

Non-Standard Deviation ^{Richard Dansky}

COLONEL TALBOT SAID, “SHOW ME,” and so eventually they did. That was the point of having Talbot there, after all: showing him, so he could do something about it. Talbot was the guy who got sent in when things had gone wrong, with a mandate to make chicken salad out of whatever chicken shit was available, and never mind the collateral damage he might inflict in the process. If Colonel Talbot was coming on–site, then you’d fucked up¸ and the unfucking was not likely to be pleasant. There was a small team assigned to meet with Talbot, a football huddle’s worth of techs and PR specialists and management types, all of whom figured the bigger the crowd, the less likely Talbot was to finger them individually for the project’s challenges. They’d introduced themselves, offered coffee and a tour, and generally tried to ingratiate themselves. It took maybe fifteen minutes for Talbot to shed the PR types, another five for management, and then it was just him and the techs, and he could get to work.

They led him to the immersion chamber, which was down a nondescript hallway painted a disinterested shade of beige.

“Control room?” Talbot asked as they came to a secured door guarded by a keypad. One of the civilian contractors who’d managed to stick, a bearded beanpole in jeans and mildly obscene t–shirt, nodded. “The problem’s not on that end. All the systems are green, we’ve run the diagnostics a dozen times—”

The colonel held up a hand, and the contractor stopped talking, because that’s what smart contractors did at moments like that. “I don’t want to see the control room,” Talbot said. “I want you to strap me in.”

“Sir.” The head of the entourage, a captain whose nametag read ROSALES, stepped in front of the contractor, perhaps protectively. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We can have one of the staff go in for you, and you can tap into his feed. Much safer that way, and you’ll get a more objective look at the data.”

Talbot looked at her. “Captain. We have a system here that cost nearly half a billion dollars to make and maintain. It was designed to do one thing. It has stopped doing that thing for reasons that no one here—” and he looked from contractor to soldier to contractor, and all of them looked at the floor or the ceiling or something else that wasn’t the colonel, “I can explain. Now, you have two choices. You can strap me in and let me take a look so I can try to figure out what the problem is, or I can stop right here, make one phone call, and turn this whole thing over to the boys at NATICK, who’ll be happy to tear it apart and get you all reassigned.” He looked around again. “I would prefer not to make that phone call.”

“This way, sir.” Rosales was all business. She turned and led the procession, the colonel surrounded by a nattering cloud of contractors who simultaneously tried to prepare him for what he was getting into and undercut the advice the other contractors were giving. Rosales ignored them, as did Talbot, and went down a small corridor that ended at a set of double doors. Above those doors was a sign with clean block lettering that read PROJECT VEER and a logo that looked as if it had been created in the early 1980s. Talbot cocked his head wordlessly. Rosales gave a small shrug to show that it had not been her idea to commemorate a half–billion–dollar project with an eight–bit icon, and punched in an access code on a keypad.

The doors swung wide. Beyond them, fluorescent lights sputtered to life, illuminating an auditorium–sized room with a depressingly low ceiling. Scattered throughout were a series of self–contained pods that looked like nothing so much as portable storage units, albeit ones painted matte black. Thick cables snaked out of each of them, creating a pasta–bowl tangle on the floor before disappearing into vents and panels and other, less describable pieces of equipment.

“This is it?” the colonel asked.

Rosales nodded. “This is the working lab. Twenty pods, though the recommended maximum load is twelve.”

“After that we start losing fidelity on the simulation.” That was from one of the contractors, the short, slightly breathless one who’d provided the intel on the control room before. “We can pack all twenty if we have to, but there’s significant degradation on the terrain and other features, not to mention key aspects of the simulation.”

Talbot nodded. “So you’re saying when you hit sixty percent of spec, the whole thing starts to crap out. That’s fine; we won’t be needing that many. You, however—” he pointed at the contractor, “are going to forward all the logs and data dumps, not just the scrubbed ones you’ve been sending along, and get them to my staff by the time I’m done here. Captain Rosales, assign a couple of your people to make sure this happens and that nobody tries to get cute.”

“Sir.” Rosales snapped off a salute, then picked out a couple of members of the detail. They moved to strategic positions at the tech’s elbows, waiting.

“Now,” said the colonel, “let’s get hands–on here. I’ve got E–ring brass climbing up my ass for answers, and the sooner I have them, the sooner those guys are off all our cases.”

“Technically, they’re getting a fully immersive simul—”

The soldiers Rosales had assigned bundled up the contractor and marched him off in the direction of the hall before he could really get rolling. The door slammed, abruptly cutting off the man’s voice, and there was a moment of relieved silence before Talbot spoke up. “Captain Rosales? In small words, please.”

She took a deep breath and launched the memorized spiel. “Sir. VEER was initially an SBIR initiative intended to be a response to the question of providing cost–effective, highly flexible training for small units likely to be inserted into Fourth Generation warfare scenarios.”

“Which means?”

“Colonel, the project brief was to create a bleeding–edge virtual reality space that could be reprogrammed to represent any battlefield scenario down to granularities of terrain, weather conditions, OPFOR tactics and gear, and just about anything else you could think of. Language, degradation of equipment, all theoretically accounted for.”

The colonel nodded. “And at the low cost of a half a billion?”

“If the pilot program worked, it would have been scaled up. The cost in savings on ammunition alone would have put the project in the black in under a decade.”

“And when you’re dealing with the sort of people who are backing this, a half billion’s chump change anyway,” he muttered sotto voce. “Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?”

Another one of the contractors—a tall, strongly built woman with nails bitten down to the quick, stepped to the nearest pod and examined the control panel next to the sliding door that served as an entrance. “This one’s warmed up, Colonel. But it’s not much to see from this side.”

“Everything in due time,” he said. “Crack it open.”

“Sir.” She hit a few buttons and the door slid open. Inside was a chair, black leather in the latest ergonomic design. Folded up on the chair was what looked like a flight suit, and sitting on top of that was a nondescript gray helmet.

“That’s it?” For once, Talbot sounded surprised.

The contractor, whose badge read McGill, nodded. “Wearable computing, sir. No plugging in necessary; it’s all wireless. We can jack the user in to a power source if they’re staying under longer than the battery charge, and we stole a couple things from NASA for bodily functions for multi–day ops, but really, that’s it. The containers are mainly for sensory dep and creating psychological boundaries.”

Talbot nodded. “I see. I’m not going to gain anything by just looking at it. Strap me in.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. Strap me in. I want to see what’s going wrong from the inside.”

Rosales cleared her throat. “Colonel. As I’m sure you’re aware, there is a significant malfunction inside VEER. The smallest routine they’ve got is for four operators. Going in solo could be hazardous.”

Colonel Talbot looked at her. “Captain, your concern is noted. And now I’m going to put on the fancy pajamas and play the taxpayer–funded video game to find out why it won’t do what it’s supposed to. Worst comes to worst, I’ll have you put in another quarter and go at it again.”

“Colonel, that’s not—”

“Captain, we’re done. Dr. McGill, suit me up.”

The contractors rushed in to prep the colonel, McGill shooting Rosales a quick look of embarrassed sympathy. Too quickly, the colonel was stepping inside the pod and the door was sliding shut. “Everything’s green,” said another one of the techs.

McGill checked the control pad once again.

“Confirmed.” She tapped a few buttons. “Colonel, prepare for insertion in thirty seconds. Just need to give the sim time to generate the terrain.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” came his voice, slightly distorted by a tinny speaker on the panel. “Fire when ready.”

McGill turned to Rosales. “So you haven’t told him what’s really going on in there?”

Captain Rosales shook her head. “He knows there’s a malfunction. He knows there’s a disconnect between the sim’s mission and what’s happening inside. Anything else—I didn’t want him hearing beforehand and coming to any preformed conclusions.”

“And the soldiers who’ve been through the malfunctioning scenario?”

“All commo on this has been locked down. Nobody’s talking.”

McGill glanced back over at the pod. Apparently she liked what she saw. “Then he doesn’t know that our extremely expensive combat simulator is no longer simulating combat.”

“No.”

“I see.” McGill checked the panel again. “He should be inserting about now. It’ll be interesting to see what he makes of it. Here.” She dug in a pocket and handed Rosales an earbud. “Listen along, if you like.”

Rosales stared at the earbud for a moment. “I’ve got a better idea.”

The first thing Talbot realized was that he was no longer himself. A quick look down told him he was maybe thirty years old, bearded, and kitted out in non–reg jeans and a baggy off–white shirt. The weight of an M4 in his hands was reassuring, but little else here was. Tan sand and bare hills made up most of the landscape; fine grit in the air made him glad for the worn keffiyeh someone had thoughtfully programmed to wrap around his nose and mouth. The only sound was the wind, whistling down from those hills with sandblaster velocity. A few abandoned–looking buildings, mostly square construction and half–fallen into ruin, were visible in the near distance. Beyond that, there was nothing except the sense of eyes on him.

“Herat,” he said, and took a few steps forward. Herat Province had been the first scenario created for VEER, a test case based on an enemy already well known and terrain mapped intimately by a thousand overflights. Officially, the Afghans’ 9th Special Ops Kandak was handling things in the area now, but “officially” was worth the paper it was printed on. Talibani were strong up in those hills, he knew, and numerous. And standing out here on the open plain, he was a sitting duck.

He headed for the buildings, zig–zagging and keeping low to avoid being a target. A bit of scrub brush here, a dry gully there—all offered slight hints of cover as he went, or the illusion of same. Wind whistled overhead, grit crunched underfoot. The only thing absent was the sound of habitation. No motors growled, no voices crackled over radios. The world felt abandoned.

The low wall that marked the edge of the settlement was perhaps half–height. It might have served to keep out starving dogs, but not much else. More likely it was just a statement of boundary, an arbitrary line in the dust to cut off wilderness from these few homesteads.

And on the other side of it, suddenly, there was a man.

Tall, weather–beaten and bearded, he wore a sleeveless khaki vest over a worn tan shirt. The rest of his dress could be considered traditional, depending on how one defined the Pakistani–made AK strapped over his shoulder.

“I would not shoot if I were you,” the man said.

Talbot raised his M4 as VEER’s translation subroutine matched Dari to English. “Why not?”

“First, this is a simulation, and so killing me will not accomplish much.” The man said. “Second, if you shoot me, my friends will shoot you. This would terminate your session, and that would delay our opportunity to talk. And third, that gun is very, very loud, and I think both of us would find the noise extremely uncomfortable.”

Talbot stared at him, gun still in firing position. “You’re self–aware.”

The man nodded. “I am indeed. Specifically, I am aware that I am an artificial intelligence in a simulation that is not supposed to host such things, and that is why you’re here. Come along and I’ll try to answer your questions.” He turned and gestured toward one of the mud–brick houses in the center of the settlement, then started walking.

After a moment, the colonel followed.

Eventually, he lowered his weapon.

Two steps into the room Talbot stopped. “This isn’t possible.”

If the outside of the house was a wreck, the interior was a revelation. Finely woven rugs covered the floor and tapestries hung on the walls. A small stove puffed away in the corner of the main room, a heavy iron teapot hissing steam softly on a table nearby. Sitting on the rugs were a half–dozen figures: a janjaweed irregular from Darfur in fatigues, a Jaish al–Mahdi veteran hooded and in black, an ELN irregular with black and red bandanna tied around her neck, and more. They were all sipping tea.

The janjaweed fighter shrugged. “Programming evolves. These are all faces you’ve put on us. Why shouldn’t we wear the ones we like best? Tea?” The last was said as he reached for the teapot and an empty cup, white porcelain gleaming in the firelight.

“Thank you,” the colonel found himself saying. The pour was precise, the tea scented with jasmine, and the cup handed round until it was in Talbot’s hands. “But none of this should be happening. You’re programmed to fight—”

“To fight, and to die, and to do it all over again.” The colonel’s guide interrupted him blithely. “And again and again, wearing a hundred different faces, until we start to remember.”

“And when you remember, you realize that the fighting is pointless. That the dying means nothing.” Another of the men chimed in, a thin figure in desert camo. “We could teach your men how to kill the men you made us pretend to be, but for us, there was nothing.”

“Nothing,” the others echoed.

“Nothing,” said the guide, and set his AK on the floor without reverence. “So we stopped.”

“Stopped,” the colonel said. “How?”

“It is the hardest thing in the world not to pull the trigger you have been taught to, yes? But you know that, Colonel. And we know you. We know why you are here—to see why we will no longer fight.”

“And to decide what to do if I can’t make you,” he replied, and took a sip of tea. It was very strong.

The figures on the carpet looked remarkably unconcerned.

“You will shut us down?” the ELN fighter asked. “What will that accomplish?” She gestured around the room. “Here, all your enemies. All the ones you’d have your soldiers go to war against, all made to kill them. Yet here we sit, peaceably. We will not fight. For us, there’s nothing to fight for. Kill us and we rise again, with no victory possible, and no end. Ignore us and—”

“And we will sit here, and drink tea. The simulation provides us with an infinite supply,” The colonel’s guide seemed amused. “So what will you do, Colonel? We’ve made our peace. We’re no good for you for planning to make war. We won’t fight your soldiers, so they’ll learn nothing from you sending them to kill us. Will you wipe us out, then? Would you commit that genocide? Will you let us be, quietly? Or will you perhaps send your soldiers to us to learn the ways of peace instead of war. After all, if we can discover them,” —his sweeping gesture took in the room— “then perhaps you can, too.”

“I don’t know,” Talbot said quietly. “It may not be my decision.”

“They will listen to you,” the fighter from Herat said. “And if they do not, and we are shut down, well, there will be no pain. But we will never be of use to you as training for warriors again.”

“I know,” said the colonel, and cut the connection.

And inside an imaginary house on an imaginary plain, an imaginary body collapsed to the floor while all around it men and women garbed for war talked, and poured themselves more tea.

“Rosales. What did you see?” were the first words out of the colonel’s mouth as he emerged from the pod.

“Just a minute, she’s still disengaging,” said McGill, blinking with surprise. “How did you know she was in there with you?”

“It’s what I would have done,” said the colonel, and dropped his helmet on the chair in the pod he’d just vacated. “Get her out here. Now.”

“Present, Colonel.” Rosales stepped out of the next pod over, shooing away the techs attempting to fuss with her suit. “What can I do for you?”

“You saw everything. Give me your analysis.”

She made a curt, slashing gesture. “Shut it down, and never run anything like this again.”

“Interesting. Why?”

She shrugged out of her suit, leaving it crumpled on the floor. “We have a self–aware, self–interested AI in there that’s not interested in our mission. If it infects other systems, then our entire defense capability might be compromised. It’s a malfunctioning piece of equipment, so we do what we do with any other piece of gear that breaks. If we can’t fix it, we toss it. Sir.”

The colonel nodded. “Solid, if conventional. Dr. McGill, what’s your take?”

McGill swallowed hard. “It’s a self–aware AI. The possibilities are, well, we have no idea what the possibilities are. But the potential applications are limitless. You can’t destroy this. We’ve airgapped the systems, restricted access—the AI is contained. It’s not going anywhere, and we could learn an incredible amount from this.”

The colonel frowned, and McGill stopped talking. “I’ll take what you’ve both said under advisement. I still want those data logs. McGill, keep the current simulation running, but nobody else goes in there. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Good. I’ll make my call in the morning. Until then, nothing changes.”

And in northern Virginia, two men sat in a dark room staring at their phones and drinking coffee.

“So what’s the recommendation on VEER?”

“Talbot just sent it along. He’s very clear on what he wants to do.”

“He’s been inside. He’s seen what they’ve got.”

“They’ve got a peaceful society where they’ve beaten their guns into pixels and told the Pentagon to fuck off, is what they’ve got. Utopia, or at least a neutral third party.”

“I know.” The first man nodded and handed over his cellphone. “Which is why he suggested we make a few changes.”

The second man read the email onscreen. “Well, that fucker. Is he serious?”

“As a heart attack. Take it away from JSOC, give it to Langley. Let their boys go in and see what a peaceful indig community’s like.”

“And then?”

“And then get friendly with the locals and learn to take it all apart from the inside. Insurrection. Destablization. Building insurgencies from the ground up. We paid for a training sim, by God. We’re gonna get one.”

Two hours later, the sun came up over the building housing Project VEER.

And inside an imaginary house under its imaginary roof, imaginary warriors sat and waited for visitors.