The neural handshake hit like ice water behind the eyes, and Elias Trent opened his eyes to a forest that was not there.
Pine trunks rose around him in tight formation, their bark rough and grey under a sky the color of unpolished tin. The simulation carried a weight, a pressure against the eardrums that he had learned to call silence. Somewhere ahead, the rest of the strike element was already moving, servos whining, boots crushing the false pine needles into aromatic dust.
Trent checked his rig. No powered frame. Just the light exoskeleton, the kind they gave to surveyors and admin corps who needed to keep up on long marches. The strike teams walked past him in their heavy armor, faceless behind smoked visors, each one a half-ton of moving plate and hydraulics.
"Trent." The voice belonged to Sergeant Okonjo, a woman whose face Trent had seen exactly twice outside of full combat gear. Both times she had not been smiling. "You're with Bravo. Try not to die in the first three minutes."
"Yes, Sergeant."
She was already moving, her armor blurring through the underbrush at a speed he could not match. Trent set his jaw and followed.
The exercise was called Iron Wastes, a clearing operation against entrenched insurgent positions. The insurgents were other squads from the battalion, or rather their AI echoes, trained on six months of colonial rebellion footage. They hid in bunkers, placed mines with malicious precision, and they did not stay dead when you shot them.
Trent ran. His breath came in gasps. The exoskeleton bit into his hips with every stride, a dull counterpoint to the rifle banging against his ribs. Ahead, the strike teams flowed around obstacles he had not seen, their armor carrying them over fallen logs and through wire in smooth, terrible arcs.
"Contact left," someone called.
The world erupted.
Tracer rounds stitched the air in pale blue lines. Someone screamed. An armored trooper took a hit to the chest plate and went down on one knee, the impact translated through the sim into a shove that sent her sliding back two meters. Trent threw himself behind a tree that smelled of resin and something burnt.
"Suppressing fire," Okonjo ordered.
The strike teams laid down a curtain of fire that turned the forest into a strobe of muzzle flash. Trent fumbled with his rifle, cycling to automatic, and added his own ragged bursts to the noise. His rounds went wide. He knew they went wide. The rifle was set up for someone with armor compensation, and he was fighting the stock as much as the enemy.
A grenade detonated twenty meters to his right. The sim did not do shrapnel, but it did overpressure, and the wave hit him like a wall of sound. His ears rang. His vision whited out for half a second. When it cleared, the bunker was burning. Three figures in light armor were dragging a wounded comrade toward the treeline. Trent saw his chance.
He moved.
The exoskeleton was not built for this. It was built for walking, for standing in one place for hours while he plotted coordinates. It did not pivot well. It did not absorb the shock of a landing after a slide. Trent came out of his crouch and sprinted, and his right foot caught a root, and the world tilted.
He hit the ground hard. The pain feedback was set to eighty percent today, the setting they used for officers and noncombatants. It still felt like being kicked by a horse. His left side took the brunt of it, ribs compressing against the uneven forest floor. The impact drove the air out of him in a single sharp bark.
The prompt appeared in the upper right of his vision, small white text: TAP OUT? Y N.
Trent blinked it away.
He rolled onto his stomach and brought his rifle up. The wounded insurgent was twenty meters away, trying to reach cover. Trent fired three times. Two rounds hit the dirt. One hit the insurgent's leg. Not enough to stop them. But enough to slow them.
"Trent." Okonjo's voice was in his ear now, private channel. "You're down. Tap out. Medical is standing by."
"I'm functional, Sergeant."
"You hit the deck at speed. You probably cracked something."
"Probably."
Silence on the channel. Then: "Your call."
Trent pushed himself up. The pain in his left side had sharpened into something specific, a hot wire running along the eighth and ninth ribs. He had felt this before. Ten years ago, falling out of a tree stand in the northern ranges while mapping a river bend. He had set his own splint and walked six kilometers back to base.
He moved forward.
The exercise continued for another forty minutes. Trent lost track of the objectives, lost track of the kill count, lost track of everything except the next tree and the next breath and the hot wire in his side that pulsed with every heartbeat. The strike teams cleared three more bunkers. They took casualties. They pushed through a minefield that the sim rendered in invisible probabilistic steps, each wrong step a flash of red pain.
Trent did not clear any bunkers. He did not take any casualties. He followed, he suppressed, he carried ammunition when someone called for it, and once he dragged a wounded trooper back from a kill zone by the collar of her armor. His vision blurred at the edges. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
At the end, the sim dissolved. The forest pixelated into grey static and then into the white of the debrief room. Trent stood in the haptic frame, shaking, his shirt dark with sweat. The ribs on his left side screamed when he breathed.
The room filled with the rest of the element as their rigs disengaged. Most of them were laughing, or arguing about who had shot whom, or pulling off helmets to wipe their faces. Trent stayed where he was. He did not trust his legs.
A trooper named Becket walked over. Becket was six years in, two tours on the outer colonies, and he had a face that looked like it had been used to test knife edges. He stopped in front of Trent and looked him up and down.
"You the cartographer?"
"Yes."
"Heard you took a fall in the second objective."
"I did."
"Heard Okonjo told you to tap."
"She did."
Becket grunted. It was not a friendly grunt, but it was not unfriendly either. It was the grunt of a man who had seen enough people quit to recognize one who didn't.
"You shouldn't be out here," Becket said. "Wrong gear. Wrong training. You know that."
"I know it."
"Why'd you stay in?"
Trent looked at him. The question was not hostile. It was genuine.
"Because the people I'm going with are going to be out there for real," Trent said. "And I'd rather learn how to fall down here than let them find out I can't get up when it matters."
Becket looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and walked away.
Trent made his way to the debrief table. His left hand pressed against his ribs, fingers splayed, trying to keep the bones from shifting. Each step sent a small bright shock up into his shoulder.
Petra Almasi was already there. She had her own light exoskeleton standing in the corner, and she was reviewing telemetry on a slate. She looked up when he sat down, and her eyes went to the way he was holding his side.
"You're favoring your ribs," she said.
"Cracked, probably."
"You should have tapped."
"Probably."
She studied him. Petra was not a soldier. She was a xenobiologist, attached to the expedition because Meridian was rumored to have biosignatures that nobody else could certify.
Almasi did not ask him to remove his shirt. She reached across the table and pressed two fingers against the lowest rib on his left side, then slid them upward along the costal margin. Trent held his breath. The pain was bright and specific, a thin line of heat that traveled with her fingertips.
"Two fractures," she said. "Possibly three. You should have taped before you came down."
"I'll tape now."
"You should have done it six hours ago."
"You're telling me."
"No." Almasi pulled her hand back. "I'm observing it. There's a difference."
Trent looked at her. He had the steady eyes of a man who had grown up in a house where the walls were thin and the silences were loud. His brother had been louder. Elias had been quieter, the one who read maps by the window while his brother took apart radios at the kitchen table. That had been a long time ago. That had been on a different continent, in a different season of his life.
"Okonjo's going to scrub you," Almasi said. "You know that."
"I know it."
"And you're going to talk her out of it."
"I'm going to try."
She almost smiled. Almost. The corner of her mouth twitched, but the rest of her face stayed professional. She turned back to her slate and began entering the telemetry codes. Trent began the slow business of unwinding the elastic bandage from his kit with one hand while the other pressed against his ribs.
The rec hall was on sublevel three, two decks below the training floor and three above the barracks. It was a long room with a low ceiling and bolted-down furniture. The walls were painted the color of old mustard, and someone had taped a paper star to the bulkhead above the bar as a joke that had stopped being funny years ago. The bar itself was a slab of composite that had been scarred by a thousand drink rings. Behind it, a man named Beckwith, no relation to anyone named Becket, poured drinks from bottles that were older than most of the personnel on base.
Hollis Kane was already there when Almasi came down the ladder. He sat at the far end of the bar with a glass of something amber and a small notebook open in front of him. He was writing in it with a stylus, his shoulders hunched, his thick fingers careful with the script. When he heard Almasi's boots on the deck plates, he looked up and closed the notebook with one hand.
"Doctor."
"Kane."
"You're out late."
"You're out late."
He smiled. It was a smile that had been practiced on men who did not need to be charmed. It landed anyway. "I am always out late, Doctor. It's the only time the numbers stop moving."
Almasi climbed onto the stool beside him. Beckwith poured her a glass of water without being asked. She drank half of it before she set it down.
"Rough one upstairs?" Kane asked.
"Rough one everywhere."
"Ah."
He did not press. Kane was a man who understood that some things were not to be pressed. He had been in enough rooms with enough generals to know that the most dangerous question was the one you didn't ask.
Yara Solberg came down the ladder three minutes later. She was still in her climbing harness, the webbing loose around her hips, the carabiners chiming softly against each other as she moved. She dropped into the stool on Almasi's other side and held up two fingers to Beckwith.
"Two?"
"Two," she said.
He poured. She drank. She set the glass down and looked at Kane.
"You're thinking about ore again," she said.
"I'm always thinking about ore."
"You're thinking about it loud. I can hear the numbers from the ladder."
Kane chuckled. It was a low, rolling sound, the kind that came from somewhere deep in the chest. "The numbers are restless tonight. They've been restless since the briefing. Since Dr. Almasi's team came back with the readings."
Almasi said nothing. She had not expected Kane to bring up the readings so soon, but she should have. Kane was the kind of man who waited until the room was small and the hour was late and then opened the door he had been holding shut all day.
"Tell me about the readings," he said.
"They're preliminary."
"Tell me about them anyway."
Almasi looked at her glass. The water caught the overhead light and threw a small bright coin onto the bar.
"There's a thermal signature under the second ridge," she said. "It's not a geological signature. Geological signatures are broad. This one is narrow. This one is consistent with a vein."
"A vein."
"A vein."
Kane did not move. His face did not change. But his eyes did. They went flat and far, the way a bird's eyes go flat when it sees a predator in the grass.
"How narrow?" he asked.
"Narrow enough."
"How deep?"
"Deep enough."
"And you're certain?"
"I'm never certain. I'm a scientist. But the signature is consistent with a vein of high-grade ore, and the depth is consistent with what the preliminary surveys suggested."
Kane picked up his glass. He did not raise it. He turned it slowly in his thick hand, watching the amber liquid move.
"You understand," he said, "what that means."
"I understand what it means to the expedition. I don't understand what it means to you."
"I am a simple man, Doctor. I have simple tastes."
"You understand what it means to the expedition," Almasi repeated, "and you understand what it means to you. I am asking you to tell me which one you're thinking about."
Kane smiled again. This time the smile was different. This time the smile reached his eyes.
"Both," he said. "Always both."
Solberg set her glass down. "You know," she said, "for a man who talks about ore the way other men talk about their children, you haven't told me what you actually do."
"I am a financier."
"Financiers don't climb."
"Financiers who climb have shorter lives than financiers who don't."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Kane said. "It isn't."
He lifted his glass and drank. He set it down. He turned to Almasi.
"Tell me about the man who commanded the last expedition."
Almasi looked at him. The question was not casual. The question had edges.
"Captain Ashby," she said.
"Captain Tomas Ashby."
"Yes."
"Tell me about him."
Almasi did not answer immediately. The rec hall was quiet. Beckwith was polishing a glass at the far end of the bar. The overhead lights hummed. The ventilation system pushed cool air down from the ceiling, and it carried the faint smell of recycled water and old metal.
"He was a good officer," Almasi said. "He was unconventional. He believed the expedition had a higher purpose than the mission profile allowed."
"Higher than what?"
"Higher than survey. Higher than extraction. He believed we were going out there to make contact."
"Contact with what?"
"With whatever was out there."
Kane nodded. He picked up his glass again and drank.
"You know," he said, "I was here the night he made his broadcast."
Solberg looked up. Almasi looked up. Beckwith, at the far end of the bar, did not look up, but his hands stopped moving for a moment.
"The night before Meridian," Kane said. "The night before they put him on a shuttle and sent him back to Earth in handcuffs. I was in this room. He was in this room. He had the keys to the transmitter room and he had a bottle of whiskey and he had a look in his eye that I have not seen since, on any man."
"What look?" Almasi asked.
"The look of a man who has decided that the regulations no longer apply to him."
Kane turned the glass in his hands. The amber liquid moved slowly, catching the light.
"He did not tell anyone what he was going to do. He walked into the transmitter room at twenty-three hundred hours. He locked the door behind him. He began broadcasting."
"Broadcasting what?"
"An uncoded transmission. Wide band. All frequencies. Into the void."
Solberg sat up straighter. The carabiners on her harness chimed again, a small sharp sound.
"That's impossible," she said. "The regulations prohibit any uncoded transmission into deep space without prior approval from Sovereignty Command. You can't just lock yourself in a transmitter room and broadcast into the void."
"You can if you have the keys," Kane said. "And you can if you are the kind of man who believes that the regulations do not apply to him. He broadcast for fourteen minutes. The communications officer on duty tried to raise him on the intercom. He did not respond. The duty officer tried to override the lock. The lock was reinforced. By the time they got the override code and broke down the door, he had stopped."
"And he never explained," Almasi said.
"He never explained."
"Not in any official record."
"Not in any official record."
"Not to the review board."
"Not to the review board."
"Not to you."
"Not to me."
Kane drank. He set the glass down.
"I was sitting in this room when he came down the ladder. He was shaking. His hands were shaking. He walked past me without saying a word. He walked up the ladder. He walked to the shuttle bay. He got on the shuttle. He went home. Three hours later, Meridian happened. The rest of the command staff died in their sleep. The rest of the expedition died on the surface. He survived because he was not there."
Solberg looked at Almasi. Almasi looked at her hands.
"He did not explain to me," Kane said. "But I have spent thirty years reading men, Doctor. I have spent thirty years sitting across from generals and politicians and men with too much money and not enough conscience. I know what a man looks like when he has seen something he cannot explain. I know what a man looks like when he has done something he cannot take back."
"What did he look like?" Almasi asked.
"He looked like a man who had made contact."
The rec hall was quiet. The ventilation system hummed. Beckwith set down the glass he had been polishing and went into the back room. The overhead lights buzzed.
"You knew him," Almasi said.
"I knew him," Kane said.
"How well?"
"Well enough to know that he did not break protocol for no reason. Well enough to know that whatever he broadcast, it was not a joke. Well enough to know that whatever he heard back, it was enough to shake a man who had not been shaken in twenty years of service."
Solberg looked down at her drink. The liquid trembled faintly with the vibration of the ventilation system.
"Do you think he heard something?" she asked.
"I think he heard something," Kane said. "And I think he sent a message he was not supposed to send. And I think whatever he sent is still out there. And I think whatever heard him is still out there too."
He finished his glass. He set it down. He opened his notebook again and began to write.
The transport to the forward operating base left at 0400. Trent did not sleep. He sat in his quarters with the lights off and the bunk curtain drawn and the elastic bandage tight around his ribs, and he thought about his brother. He thought about the way his brother had laughed. He thought about the way his brother had shouted. He thought about the way his brother had stood at the window with the maps spread out on the sill, and the way his brother's fingers had traced the lines of rivers that did not exist on any official chart.
His brother's personal effects had been listed as lost at Meridian. That was the official record. The personal effects of Lieutenant Marcus Trent, cartographer, expedition support, were lost during the Meridian incident, along with the personal effects of twenty-three other personnel. The inventory had been signed by a clerk whose name Trent did not recognize. The inventory had been countersigned by a logistics officer whose name Trent did recognize. The inventory had been archived and sealed and shipped back to Earth on a military transport that had docked at the central archive six weeks after the incident.
Trent had requested a copy of the inventory three times. Each request had been denied. Each denial had cited operational security. Each denial had been signed by a clerk whose name Trent did not recognize.
He had asked Almasi. He had asked Solberg. He had asked the chaplain. He had asked the personnel officer on base, who had looked at him with the flat, distant eyes of a bureaucrat who had been told not to look.
He had not asked Kane. He had not asked Kane because Kane was the kind of man who would ask questions in return, and Trent was not ready to answer questions. He was not ready to explain why he wanted his brother's effects. He was not ready to explain why he had joined the expedition in the first place. He was not ready to explain that the expedition was not about ore, and it was not about contact, and it was not about the thermal signature under the second ridge. The expedition was about his brother. The expedition had always been about his brother.
At 0230 he got up. He dressed. He walked down the ladder to the logistics office on sublevel two. The office was locked, but the duty officer was a young corporal named Reyes who had been on base for eleven days and who had not yet learned the full list of things that were not to be opened after hours.
"Trent," Reyes said. "What are you doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"Me neither."
"You have the manifest?"
"The manifest?"
"The unit manifest. The one with the equipment. The one with the personal effects."
Reyes looked at him. The young man was not suspicious. He was tired. He was tired in the way that personnel on a forward operating base are tired, which is a different kind of tired than the tired of personnel on Earth.
"Why?" Reyes asked.
"I want to check something."
"What?"
"My brother's effects."
Reyes looked at him for another moment. Then he shrugged, and turned to the terminal, and typed in his access code.
The manifest came up. It was a long list, organized by category, organized by date, organized by the unit identification number of every piece of equipment on base. Trent scrolled through it. He scrolled past the field rations. He scrolled past the environmental suits. He scrolled past the climbing hardware. He scrolled past the scientific instruments. He scrolled past the medical supplies. He scrolled past the small arms.
He stopped.
The entry was in the personal effects section. The entry was marked with a red flag. The red flag indicated classified. The classified lockout was a tier above the standard lockout. The standard lockout required a personnel officer. The classified lockout required a directorate. The directorate named on the lockout was Sovereignty Intelligence. The director named on the lockout was Director Cassius Volk.
Trent read the entry three times. The entry did not change.
Item: Personal effects, LIETENANT MARCUS TRENT, CARTOGRAPHER, EXPEDITION SUPPORT. Quantity: 1 box. Contents: classified. Status: in inventory. Location: classified. Access: CLASSIFIED LOCKOUT. Authorizing authority: DIRECTOR CASSIUS VOLK, SOVEREIGNTY INTELLIGENCE.
Trent stared at the screen. The light of the terminal fell across his face in a thin pale wash. His left hand was pressed against his ribs. His right hand was on the edge of the console.
His brother's effects were not lost. His brother's effects were not destroyed. His brother's effects were on this base. His brother's effects were in a box on this base, and the box was classified, and the classification was signed by the director of Sovereignty Intelligence, and the director of Sovereignty Intelligence did not classify the personal effects of a dead cartographer without a reason.
"Sir?" Reyes said. "Are you all right?"
Trent did not answer. He was reading the entry again. He was reading the name. He was reading the box. He was reading the classification. He was reading the name of the man who had signed the classification.
"Sir?"
"I need a copy of this entry," Trent said.
"I can't do that, sir. It's classified."
"I need a copy of this entry, Corporal."
Reyes looked at him. The young man's eyes were wide, and not with suspicion. They were wide with the particular alarm of a young man who has just realized that he has shown something to someone he should not have shown it to.
"Sir," Reyes said, "I can't make copies of classified entries."
"You don't have to."
Trent reached into his pocket. He took out a small leather notebook, the kind cartographers carried in the field. He opened it to a blank page. He copied the entry by hand. He copied every word. He copied the classification. He copied the name. He copied the box. He copied the unit identification number.
He closed the notebook. He put it back in his pocket. He looked at Reyes.
"Thank you, Corporal," he said.
Reyes did not speak. Reyes watched him walk out of the office. Reyes watched him climb the ladder. Reyes sat at his terminal for a long time, and then he reached for the comm panel, and then he stopped, and then he pulled his hand back.
In the rec hall, Kane closed his notebook. He finished his drink. He set the glass on the bar and looked at Almasi and Solberg.
"Get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow is a long day."
He climbed down from the stool. He straightened his jacket. He walked to the ladder, and he climbed up, and he was gone.
Almasi looked at Solberg. Solberg looked at Almasi.
"He's going to do something," Solberg said.
"Yes," Almasi said.
"Are you going to stop him?"
"No."
Solberg nodded. She lifted her glass and drank. She set it down.
"Neither am I."
The ventilation system hummed. The overhead lights buzzed. The paper star above the bar fluttered faintly in the recycled air, and somewhere on sublevel two, a young corporal sat at a terminal with his hand an inch from the comm panel, deciding whether to report what he had seen, while on sublevel three, two women sat at a scarred bar and waited for the hour to turn, and in a small bunk on sublevel four, a man with cracked ribs and a leather notebook sat in the dark and read his brother's name in his own handwriting, and the name looked back at him from the page like a door that had just been opened.