Of course, the augs were also supposed to know unarmed civilians when they saw them...
The JAG was nodding. “Your mechanic. Specialist, uh...”
“Blanch.” From the room’s only civilian, standing unobtrusively with the potted plants. Becker glanced over; he flashed her a brief and practiced smile.
“Specialist Blanch, yes. He suspects there was a systems failure of some kind.”
“I would never have fired if—” Meaning, of course, I would never have fired.
Don’t be such a pussy, Becker. Last month you took on a Kuan-Zhan with zero cover and zero backup, never even broke a sweat. Least you can do now is stand next to a fucking philodendron without going to pieces.
“Accidents happen in—these kind of situations,” the PAO admitted sadly. “Drones misidentify targets. Pillbox mistakes a civilian for an enemy combatant. No technology’s perfect. Sometimes it fails. It’s that simple.”
“Yes sir.” Dimming rainbows, bleeding into the night.
“So far the logs support Blanch’s interpretation. Might be a few days before we know for certain.”
“A few days we don’t have. Unfortunately.”
The general swept a finger across his tacpad. A muted newsfeed bloomed on the war wall behind him: House of Commons, live. Opposition members standing, declaiming, sitting. Administration MPs across the aisle, rising and falling in turn. A two-tiered array of lethargic whackamoles.
The general’s eyes stayed fixed on his pad. “Do you know what they’re talking about, Corporal?”
“No, sir.”
“They’re talking about you. Barely a day and a half since the incident and already they’re debating it in Question Period.”
“Did we—”
“We did not. There was a breach.”
He fell silent. Behind him, shell-shocked pols stammered silent and shifty-eyed against the onslaught of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The Minister of Defence’s seat, Becker noted, was empty.
“Do we know who, sir?”
The general shook his head. “Any number of people could have intercepted one or more of our communications. The number who’d be able to decrypt them is a lot smaller. I’d hate to think it was one of ours, but it’s not something we can rule out. Either way—” He took a breath. “—so much for our hopes of dealing with this internally.”
“Yes sir.”
Finally he raised his eyes to meet hers. “I want to assure you, Corporal, that nobody here has passed any judgment with regard to potential—culpability. We’ve reviewed the telemetry, the transcripts, the interviews; FIT’s still going over the results, but so far there’s no evidence of any conscious wrong-doing on your part.”
Conscious, Becker noted dully. Not deliberate. Conscious. There’d been a time when the distinction would never have occurred to her.
“Be that as it may, we find ourselves forced to change strategy. In the wake of this leak it’s been decided we have to engage the public. Doubling down and invoking national security would only increase the appearance of guilt, and after that mess in the Philippines, we can’t afford even a whiff of cover-up.” The general sighed. “This, at least, is the view of the Minister.”
“Yes sir.”
“It has therefore been decided—and I’m sorry to do this to you, I know it’s not what you signed up for—it’s been decided to get out in front of this thing, as they say. Control the narrative. Make you available for interviews, prove we have nothing to hide.”
“Interviews, sir?”
“You’ll be liaising with Mr. Monahan here.” On cue, the civilian stepped out of the background. “His firm’s proven useful in matters of—public outreach.”
“Ben. Just Ben.” Monahan reached out to shake with his right hand, offered his card with the left: Optic Nerve, twinkling above a stock-ticker crawl of client endorsements. “I know how much this sucks, Corporal. I’m guessing the last thing you want to hear right now is what some high-priced image consultant has to say about covering your ass. Is that about right?”
Becker swallowed, and nodded, and retrieved her hand. Phantom wings beat on her shoulders.
“The good news is: no ass-covering required. I’m not here to polish a turd—which is actually a nice change—I’m here to make sure the truth gets out. As you know, there’s no shortage of parties who are a lot less interested in what really happened than in pushing their own agendas.”
“I can understand that,” Becker said softly.
“This person, for example.” Just Ben tapped his watch and wiped Parliament from the wall; the woman revealed in its place stood maybe one-seventy, black, hair cropped almost army short. She seemed a little off-balance in the picture; doubtless the helmeted RCMP officer grabbing her left bicep had something to do with that. The two of them danced against a chorus line of protestors and pacification drones.
“Amal Sabrie,” Monahan was saying. “Free-lance journalist, well-regarded by the left for her human rights work. Somali by birth but immigrated to Canada as a child. Her hometown was Beledweyne. Does that ring any bells, Corporal?”
Becker shook her head.
“Airborne Regiment? 1992?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Okay. Let’s just say she’s got more reason than most to mistrust the Canadian military.”
“The last person we’d expect to be on our side,” Eisbach remarked.
“Exactly.” Monahan nodded. “Which is why I’ve granted her an exclusive.”
***
They engaged on neutral territory, proposed by Sabrie, reluctantly approved by the chain of command: a café patio halfway up Toronto’s Layton Tower, overlooking Lakeshore. It jutted from the side of the building like a bracket fungus, well above most of the drone traffic.
An almost pathological empathy for victimhood. Monahan had inventoried Sabrie’s weak spots as if he’d been pulling the legs off a spider. Heart melts for stray cats, squirrels with cancer; blood boils for battered women and oppressed minorities and anyone who ever ended up on the wrong end of a shockprod. Not into performance rage, doesn’t waste any capital getting bent out of shape over random acts of microaggression. Smart enough to save herself for the big stuff. Which is why she still gets to soapbox on the prime feeds while the rest of the rabies brigade fights for space on the public microblogs.
Twenty floors below, pedestrians moved like ants. They’d never be life-sized to Becker; she’d arrived by the roof and she’d leave the same way, a concession to those who’d much rather have conducted this interview under more controlled conditions. Who’d much rather have avoided this interview entirely, for that matter. That they’d ceded so much control spoke volumes about Optic Nerve’s rep for damage control.
If we can just get her to see you as a victim—which is exactly what you are—we can turn her from agitator to cheerleader. Start off your appies as a tool of the patriarchy, you’ll be her soulmate by dessert.
Or maybe it spoke volumes about a situation so desperate that the optimum strategy consisted of gambling everything on a Hail Mary.
There she is, Monahan murmured now, just inside her right temple, but Becker had already locked on: The target was dug in at a table next to the railing. This side, flower boxes and hors-d’oeuvres; that side, an eighty-meter plunge to certain death. Wingman, defanged but still untrusting, sent wary standbys to the stumps of amputated weaponry.