HAVOC: Collateral Damage

# Chapter 0: The Cadence

The convoy crested the rise four vehicles in good order, dust catching the late sun, and Ven-Sora watched it through the observation deck glass at Regent Drift and thought, *That is the wrong road.*

He had been at Regent Drift nine years. He knew which civilian convoys went through the primary corridor and which ones did not. The Aurora-class transports out of Hennessy Falls did not take Lane 7. They took the corridor that ran ten kilometres south, the one with the comms relays and the response posts and the proper border-station handoffs, the one that had been built for civilians to use because civilians used it.

Lane 7 was an agricultural corridor. The drainage channels ran through it. The orchards came up to the fence on the Kaath-Riven side. Six weeks ago a UEF patrol had taken a Kaath-Riven shooter on Lane 7 and a UEF marine had moved his squad sideways at 06:41 one full second before the shooter had sighted his weapon and the helmet footage had ended up on Ven-Sora's desk. Ven-Sora had logged the first escalation glyph then, on the Veth diplomatic pouch that had carried the helmet still up to Veth Kaan. He had walked the pouch to transit himself, to compress the chain.

Now there was a convoy on Lane 7 that should not have been on Lane 7. Four Aurora-class vehicles, civilian markings, the second one carrying what looked like a clinic module slung underneath. Three hundred metres of dust trailing behind them. Six hundred metres ahead of them, the Kaath-Riven side of the orchards.

Ven-Sora keyed his terminal and pulled the corridor roster. He scanned for an Aurora-class convoy with proper diplomatic clearance. There was nothing on the roster. There was nothing routed through the response posts. There was a single line in the rerouting log that said the primary corridor request had been *pending operational review* for one hundred and forty-two days.

Ven-Sora read the line twice.

A Kaath-Riven liaison did not have the authority to query the routing of a UEF civilian convoy. He did not have the authority to ask why an Aurora-class transport was on an agricultural corridor. He had the authority to log border crossings and to scan diplomatic pouches and to file routing tags and to drink the coffee in the small steel cup that the morning shift had left for him on the observation deck.

He drank the coffee. It was bad. He watched the convoy.

The Kaath-Riven probing element came out of the orchard line at four hundred metres.

It was not a fire team. It was a fire team and a half: six operators in modified armour, two of them carrying the long anti-vehicle launchers that had been standard issue four years ago and were now standard issue again because someone in the Kaath-Riven Intelligence Directorate had decided that someone in the UEF was running civilian convoys on agricultural corridors, and the something the Kaath-Riven did about it was the something they did about it.

The first launcher round took the lead Aurora through the engine compartment. The vehicle came apart sideways across the road. The second round took the third Aurora at the door pillar. The fourth Aurora was the one with the clinic module slung underneath. The clinic module was where the children were.

Ven-Sora set his coffee down. He did not look away.

He had been at Regent Drift nine years. He had logged a great many border incidents. He had filed a great many routing tags. He had walked one diplomatic pouch personally to transit, to compress the chain. He had not known until this moment that he was the kind of man who could watch a clinic module come apart on a road in the middle distance and not look away.

The fourth Aurora was three vehicle lengths from the clinic module when the third launcher round took it. Some of the children walked out. Some of them did not. The smoke came up off the road in a colour that was not a colour: brown going to grey going to black going to something else. The shooter element on the orchard side did not advance. They held their position, weapons ready, looking down the road at the wreck and at the children walking out of it. They were waiting for something.

UEF medics arrived from a response post that was not on the roster. Ven-Sora did not know they had a response post that close to Lane 7. They were dragging civilians clear before he had finished thinking that thought. The shooter element on the orchard side watched the medics drag the civilians clear. The shooter element did not fire on the medics. They were not there to kill medics. They were there to send a message about a road that was not supposed to have civilians on it.

Ven-Sora reached into his jacket and took out the Veth diplomatic pouch he had been keeping for three days. There was an outgoing diplomatic packet in it. There was the routing tag the packet would carry up to Veth Kaan. He read the routing tag against the desk light.

The routing tag was twenty-three characters long. Twenty-two of them were standard. The twenty-third character was an escalation glyph. He had logged this glyph once before in his nine years. He had logged it six weeks ago, on the pouch that had carried the helmet still up to Veth Kaan after the Lane 7 shooter incident.

This was the second time he had logged it.

Ven-Sora returned to the secure terminal room. The medics were still working. He could hear the helicopters spinning up at the response post he had not known was there. He keyed in his access code and his terminal acknowledged him. He did not call Veth Kaan over the open channel. He did not file the glyph through the standard routing tree. He typed the twenty-three characters of the routing tag into the manual override field and he pressed send.

The acknowledgement came back from Veth Kaan in three seconds. A single character. They had been waiting for this.

Ven-Sora reached up to the shelf above the terminal and took down his personal log. It was a paper notebook with a black cover and a UEF-standard pencil clipped inside the spine. He had carried it for nine years. He had written in it three times: once when his daughter was born, once when his father died, and once six weeks ago after the helmet still.

He opened the notebook. He uncapped the pencil. He wrote one line.

*The cadence was not theirs. They fired a cadence that was not theirs.*

He put the pencil back in the spine. He closed the notebook. He returned it to the shelf. He went back to the observation deck and he picked up his coffee and he watched the medics finish dragging clear the children who could be dragged clear and the children who could not be dragged clear stayed where they were and the smoke came up off the road in a colour that was not a colour and Ven-Sora did not look away.

The shooter element on the orchard side withdrew at sundown. They had not advanced and they had not fired on the medics. They had done exactly the thing they had come to do. Ven-Sora watched the last of them go back into the orchard line and he thought, *Someone in the UEF is running civilians on agricultural corridors and the Kaath-Riven know about it and we know they know about it and somewhere there is a man at a desk who put those children on that road.*

He drank the rest of the coffee. It was cold. It was still bad. He set the cup down on the observation deck rail and he went back inside the terminal room and he began to draft the official cross-border incident report he was required to file, the one that would say *UEF civilian convoy ambushed by Kaath-Riven probing element on Lane 7 agricultural corridor*, the one that would not say anything about the routing log that had been *pending operational review* for one hundred and forty-two days.

He drafted it carefully. He filed it through the standard tree. He did not log the second escalation glyph in any open channel. He had already logged it where it needed to go.

When he was finished he went home. His daughter was at the kitchen table doing her schoolwork. She looked up and asked him about his day and Ven-Sora told her his day had been ordinary and she looked at him for a moment and then she went back to her schoolwork. She was eleven. She was old enough to know when her father was lying and old enough to let him lie.

He sat at the table beside her. She did not ask again.