04
<declaration>
<i: My job is to start wars.>
<i: At least everyone seems to think so.>
</declaration>
✦ ✦ ✦
It wasn’t always like this. Things had been different, albeit some time before I entered the agency.
The Helix Inspection Agency was part of WHO, the World Health Organization.
In the beginning we were like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but for genetics rather than nukes. It was our job to visit any admedistration facility doing research on genetic engineering to make sure nothing was being produced that could potentially be a threat to humankind. We were supposed to monitor the technology, that was all. That was around when the “helix” got attached to our name.
However it happened, the scope of our operations expanded wildly over the years until we were basically a flag-waving troop of diplomats-cum-peacekeepers charged with the protection of life everywhere—not to put too fine a point on it. As Miach used to say, no one who waves a big flag is up to any good. So we would wander into other admedistrations and even some old-style governments to check whether they were ensuring their populace a lifestyle that was sufficiently “healthy and human”—a recipe for conflict if there ever was one. We were like a hand grenade loaded with the seeds of mass mayhem, one our elders had gleefully passed on to us for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom.
This was the place I had chosen to be my escape from the world.
As nations gradually downsized their functions, leaving only a smattering of military and police forces, stewardship of the planet’s economy fell to the massive number of admedistrations that rose in their place. Unlike the now-obsolete national governments, admedistrations were smaller units, operating on shared principles of medicine, thoughtfulness, and charity—which meant if they saw a neighbor suffering, they couldn’t just stand back and leave them to their own devices. Even though Niger was ostensibly still an old-style nation, the reason for their altercation with the Tuareg was none other than a misguided attempt to force the Kel Tamasheq to link to the Nigerian medical server—“To ensure the nomads a more healthy lifestyle,” they said.
The Kel Tamasheq’s response, of course, was “Fuck off.”
The sociologists expressed the guiding principle behind the Helix Inspection Agency and ostensibly, the Nigerian government, like this:
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<dictionary>
<item>Lifeism</item>
<definition>
A politically enacted policy or tendency to view the preservation of health to be an admedistration’s highest responsibility. Based on the welfare societies of the twenty-first century. In practical terms, this means the inclusion of every adult in a homeostatic health-monitoring network, the establishment of a high-volume medical consumer system with affordable medicine and medical procedures, and the provision of proper nutrition and lifestyle advice designed to mitigate predicted lifestyle-related illnesses. These activities are seen as the basic minimum conditions for human dignity.
</definition>
</dictionary>
✦ ✦ ✦
We Helix agents were the elite soldiers of lifeism. That was how many people saw us, at any rate. And it was true enough that, when we did mobilize after receiving requests from several admedistrations, what I would write in my subsequent reports would oftentimes lead the parties involved directly to war.
With our current Sahara situation, the agency hadn’t even decided which side we were on. As I said before, the Tuareg had installed WatchMe, and they were using that fact to argue that they were not the anti-lifeists the Nigerians said they were.
As the self-appointed judges of all life, the Helix Inspection Agency never wanted for critics with axes to grind—sometimes quite literally.
✦ ✦ ✦
<list:item>
<i: shooting>
<i: stabbing>
<i: strangling>
<i: poisoning>
<i: bombing>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
These were just some of the varied ways in which no fewer than twelve Helix agents had died in the line of duty. This was the job I had found for myself, traipsing to every war zone in the world, inviting hatred at every turn—a senior inspector at the tender age of twenty-eight. Due to the dangers inherent in the job, I had trained in how to use most modern weapons and more than a few primitive ones as well.
Which was why it made sense for Étienne—whose machismo was undercut by an utter lack of combat experience—to call to me for help from the gunner seat of our armored transport.
✦ ✦ ✦
<shout>
“We have a problem, ma reine! They’re going to see us!”
</shout>
“Oh, they’ve probably already taken several pictures,” I muttered to myself, then shouted over the whine of the transport’s engine and the creaking of the suspension, “You think it’s a standalone?”
“Probably,” Étienne shouted back. “Niger knows the Tuareg use electronic countermeasures, so there’s a good chance the WarBird flies silent.”
“Someone’s highly trained, hopped-up bald eagle then.”
“The brain, yes. But the body is a soft composite. Plenty of hard points on the wings.”
“A surveillance bird packing heat? That’s a bit odd.”
“This is supposed to be a no man’s land. If anyone’s out here, it would be either the Nigerians themselves or the Tuareg. Why wouldn’t they come armed?”
“Well, as long as they really are on their own and don’t get any images of us back to their HQ, we’re fine.”
I told one of Étienne’s men to drive for me and gave him the wheel. Moving into the back compartment, I pulled out a lethal-looking cylindrical object stashed next to the crates of cigars and booze—something the Kel Tamasheq warrior had thrown in as a “bonus.”
“Get down from the gunner’s seat, Étienne. I’ll handle this.”
“What do you mean handle—”
When the Frenchman looked down from his perch and saw what I was holding, every muscle in his body froze, causing his hands to slip from the railing. Étienne fell past me down into the passenger compartment. Not that I blamed him. It wasn’t every day you saw a girl cradling a more-than-a-century-old RPG launcher under her arm.
“Tell your man driving to keep us going straight. Whatever he does, I don’t want him jerking the wheel one way or the other.”
“Got it,” came the muffled reply. Shamelessly violent launcher in hand, I stuck my torso out through the rooftop hatch.
“You sure you can handle that thing, Miss Kirie?” I heard Étienne’s voice from the floor of the transport below.
“Better than you can,” I replied quietly, then gave the trigger a squeeze.
For all their sophistication, WarBirds were fairly artless things when it came to flying. They never zigzagged or circled, just flew straight toward their target like this one was flying toward us right now. All I had to do was fire my gift from the Kel Tamasheq into the air directly behind us to ensure a fatally explosive midair rendezvous.