Linda Nagata - The Last Good Man

In their defense, it’s hard to tell an enemy from a friend.

A friend today might be an enemy tomorrow.

Besides, it’s no easy thing to ask questions amid the Babel of languages in the TEZ. Foreigners are everywhere, wandering the shattered remains of the Caliphate, still looking for God or looking for trouble or just looking for a way out. The reasons they are here don’t matter to ReqOps’ mission, but their presence makes it easier for the teams to blend in.

True is part of Gold Team. They’ve been assigned to enter the TEZ from the west, all of them packed into a battered taxi with underpowered air conditioning. They bump and rattle through an overnight journey across the poisoned remains of Syria, on a road that should have been straight but instead snakes around bomb craters. On the road’s shoulders is the detritus of years of conflict: burned and twisted remnants of vehicles, many of them technicals—pickup trucks converted to carry machine guns or missile launchers. Civilian cars, too, that might have belonged to families fleeing the horrors of war, but who can say? Some of the wrecks are partly buried in sand and grit. Others look like they burned last night. That’s an illusion, True knows. A deceptive effect of the taxi’s headlights. There hasn’t been military action on this road for at least three weeks.

The only signs of life are occasional headlights blasting up the highway out of the east.

As they near the last junction before Tadmur, they come upon a ruined tank, and after that another, and another. Fourteen in all, many blown apart, all blackened by fire—the sordid remnants of a hired army that tried to enter the conflict two years before, only to be taken apart by aerial bombardment. The sight is not a surprise. True has seen the pictures. But in the night, glimpsed on the periphery of the headlights, those dead tanks bring home the hubris of the PMC that fielded them. It’s never been made clear who hired the mercenary army or why. Afterward the company evaporated, the executives became fugitives, and the surviving staff scattered to the four winds.

Requisite Operations is a mercenary company too, though it’s not part of their business plan to mount a brazen invasion on the back of a billion dollars of surplus military equipment. But if they were going to do it, True would make damn sure they had a competent air force in play.

A few more kilometers, and a faint, rosy glow paints the eastern horizon, visible past the swaying heads and shoulders of the men in the front bench seat. True is in the back of the taxi, braced between Felice and Juliet. It’s hot, close, and cramped, and the seat is doing her ass no favors. She’s looking forward to making her escape. So it’s a relief to finally glimpse the lights of their destination shining against the brightening dawn: the war-scarred town of Tadmur.

Their regional contractor, Khalid Naim, is driving the taxi. He’s a lean, lightly built young man, dressed in a neat button-down shirt and brown slacks, adept at playing the role of a world-weary intellectual. Early on, he had remarked with a shrug, “Being a taxi driver here is like having a front seat to observe humanity’s long fall.”

But his is a kind of techno-aggressive weariness. Once they reached the highway, he pulled a battered AR visor from under the dash—not a high-end MARC, just an inexpensive AltWrld model, a piece of equipment even a taxi driver could plausibly afford. He donned the ugly eyeglasses with a grin. All AR visors, with their screen offset four centimeters from the user’s eyes, are notorious for their geek mad-scientist vibe. “It’ll never get me a girlfriend,” Khalid explained. “But all the truck drivers in the TEZ use AR. They made an app that highlights the wrecks, the bomb craters, the potholes. It’s a community project.”

Rohan Valeski sits next to Khalid, squeezed into the middle of the front seat. He too wears civilian attire, though his appearance is not as neat. His collar is dusty and sweat-stained, and his thick ginger beard is untrimmed. He wears a MARC visor—it’s black-market gear here and a status symbol. In contrast, his weapon is a Fortuna 762 assault rifle, which he holds in the crook of his arm, muzzle pointed at the roof. A Fortuna is a cheap firearm, common in the region, nothing that will draw notice.

Jameson Adams carries a Fortuna too. He sits beside the window. Every time the taxi sways, the Fortuna’s muzzle taps against the window glass. Jameson is tall, broad, and intimidating. He’s chosen to dress like a local tough, utility vest over a loose tunic and brown combat trousers that are Russian in origin. His beard is trimmed into a neat goatee, black against his black skin. He too wears a MARC. From her seat in the back, True can glimpse the flickers of his light-amplified view of the road. For men, both the technology and the weapons are standard.

The women, confined to the back seat, play a different role. All three are wrapped up in abayas, the traditional black robes worn outside the home by many Muslim women in this part of the world, with hijabs to cover their heads. In the ultra-conservative TEZ this is expected and will get no questions. None of them wear MARCs or TINSLs, nor do they carry any visible weapons, because women should be protected from such things.

But—as women do—they’ve stowed a few essentials out of sight. True has her subcompact 9 mm in a shoulder holster, a thin blade under her sleeve, and in her pocket, a Taser.

Red Team is driving in from the south. They are all men: Chris, Nasir, Ted, and Nate. Wandering troublemakers. Nothing unusual. Not here.

The taxi reaches Tadmur just as dawn’s light infiltrates the town. Khalid sheds his AltWrld visor, stashing it under the dash. “It’s not polite to wear a visor in town,” he explains. “It’s tough-guy gear. Marks you as a soldier—for hire, or already in someone’s private army.”

They see only a few people about, walking, or riding bikes. Khalid drives slowly anyway, past walls that shelter family compounds, then two- and three-story apartment buildings, closely spaced, with black windows and undecorated faces. They pass a block of ruined buildings: one bombed-out shell still standing, the rest collapsed into rubble. Then they roll into a livelier neighborhood of recently rebuilt houses, two and three stories high, most surrounded by concrete walls enclosing protected yards, the dark-green fronds of date palms just visible over the tops.

Here the streets are busy. Small pickup trucks and taxis scoot past, dodging one another and the donkey carts, the goats, the people. Skeletal dogs with crooked backs skulk in the sparse shadows, keeping away from the men who stand about in small groups, three and four together, the smoke from their cigarettes reflecting the soft dawn light. Most are dressed in loose-fitting sand-colored garments. Some wear belted robes. All carry weapons. They don’t seem to have any pressing business.

True doesn’t see nearly so many women. The ones in the streets move purposefully, at a fast pace, eyes down. They all wear the hijab and like the men, they keep to groups. Safety in numbers.

True keeps her eyes down too, shifting her gaze surreptitiously to take in the sights and get a feel for the town. Even this early, the air blowing through the taxi’s vents smells of diesel exhaust, dust, and decaying things.

“Look to the left,” Khalid says. “See the house at the end? With the photovoltaic roof? That’s our target.”

True turns to look down a street that runs for a block before ending at a cross street. Situated on that cross street is a walled compound with a rust-colored, paneled steel gate flanked by young date palms only seven or eight feet high. Beyond the wall, a glassy roof of flat photovoltaic tiles glistens in the early light.