Kat’s knees buckled as she studied the impact zones in Florida. “Rachel… Dixon. They’re really gone…”
Dore caught her in mid-fall, hugging Kat close and forcing her eyes away from the giant red X crossed through Jacksonville.
The other soldiers studied their feet or the ceiling, doing their best to avoid glancing at the sobbing warrior. Dore stroked her hair, his own shoulders shaking as well.
“Damn it to hell. I’ll tell you what we need to do. We have to link up with our surviving chain of command. Let’s organize the rest of our troops, arm them with Washington’s fancy new weapons and retake the offensive!”
Andre stuck up his hand as the lieutenant opened his mouth. “I love your attitude, but the US military, hell, most professional armies worldwide, are ancient history. Just like every large population center, all major military bases were leveled in the initial meteorite bombardment or the mopping up neutron bomb strikes. General Jacobi scrapped together just about every surviving unit from around the world and threw them into that Armageddon slaughter. We’ve only heard of a few hundred troops, out of half a million, who escaped the ambush and made it out of the Middle East. That’s counting your team.”
Dore shook his head as viciously as his hands trembled. “It can’t be. America had the third largest military in the world, scattered all over the planet. No way we’ve lost everyone.”
“Oh, sure, the US Navy has a few loose ships left. I’m positive there are also some scattered National Guard and Reserve units fighting it out in the lawless lands, but there’s no cohesive command structure left. An army without a supply chain or leadership is just a starving gang in search of a mission. The few thousand active duty troops still alive that haven’t deserted are divvied up between those three rival American governments I mentioned. I guess you can take your pick between which one you’d like to pledge your loyalty too.”
The steel door blocking the command post’s entrance swung open and broke the silence. Washington stomped in and chucked a busted rifle on the ground. The now unarmed Swiss door guard rode his back with both arms wrapped around Washington’s neck. Without even slowing, Washington just reached one hand around, snagged his choker by the belt and flipped the man into the nearest empty table.
“General, can I please come in already? You don’t need support from any other nation. You people have other options.”
Andre waved down the dozens of rifles suddenly tracking Washington. “Were you listening in? What did I tell you would happen if you hacked us again…”
“Relax. I didn’t bother breaking your ancient encryption. Wasn’t necessary. You didn’t even have a password on your camera and microphone. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’m trying to respect this ‘privacy’ thing you people are always going on about, but someone had to point out the obvious. You have my sweet Kat in a state of panic with this defeatist talk and miss the obvious course of action—”
Kat came out of her shell with a roar and rushed him. “I told you about my family! How long have you known they were dead? Were you on the ship that bombarded Florida? You helped kill them, didn’t you!”
Washington snagged both her arms as she tried to pummel his face. He missed her legs though. Washington doubled over as her knee slammed his groin. Dore and Kolchak pried Kat off him before she could stomp his windpipe.
“Damn it! Kat, I was a prisoner. An engineer slaving away in the dark matter reactor. You think you’re in pain? I watched my whole planet disintegrate from the collapsing wormhole that brought us here!”
He grabbed a folding metal chair and impaled it against the cave wall. With tears in his eyes, he rolled his pupils back and sighed. Washington shook for a minute, waiting for the on-demand dopamine from his neural implant to work its magic.
“All right. So are we just going to sit around feeling sorry for ourselves or do you want to pay these bastards back?”
Washington turned to a flat wall and blinked a few times. His left eye grew bright and beamed a projection against the concrete.
“Like I said, here’s your best option. The Caliphate aren’t magicians nor even scientists. They just stole the technological edge. And that edge starts with a standard industrial nano-replicator. If we capture one of these, then we level the playing field. How would you like to build and command your own drones?”
All eyes turned to the schematic on the wall. The math symbols, many of which hadn’t been invented yet, might as well have been hieroglyphics. The only clear data point was the replicator’s dimensions.
Andre rubbed his temples. “We might be able to smuggle a small demolition team into the Middle East and take it out, but come on. That thing’s the size of a CONEX shipping container. We could never sneak something that big back here.”
“It’ll fit perfectly inside the cargo bay of our dropship. Most importantly, who said anything about going to the Middle East?” Washington swiped his hand in the air and changed the projection to a satellite view of some dead city.
“My artificial intelligence keeps getting pinged from a forward operating base just south of here. Some small town labeled ‘Vatican City’ on the maps. Have you ever heard of it?”
Captain Dore ran to the freestanding projection, giving a bird’s eye view from a Caliphate drone. “Zoom in here. Is that…”
He clenched his fist and grabbed the 3D container in the middle of St. Peter’s Square. A conveyer belt poured mountains of rock and iron ore into one side of the magic machine. Out the other end, a brand-new warbot marched out.
“Shit… General, give me a few hours to get the team ready, but we can strike tonight!”
Kolchak butted in. “My boys and I get to handle the recovery. You Americans and Europeans can cover the extraction. You owe us, Captain.”
Andre shoved them aside. “Hold on, cowboys. Washington, zoom back out.”
He grunted at the scores of drones and thousands of Jihadi fighters camped out in the dead city. Several more flying bots cruised in patient circles above the Vatican.
“If we had the firepower to break in there, we wouldn’t even be discussing this. What’s your plan to get through those defenses?”
Washington spread his hands and puffed out his cheeks. “Hey, you all are the soldiers. I’m just a lowly engineer. Don’t you have bombs and stuff?”
Andre chewed the inside of his lip. “Maybe a nuke could get the job done, but we seem to be fresh out…”
Kat clapped Washington on the back, hard enough to break the projection. “We have the next best thing, don’t we? We have our own future wizard. Should be child’s play to mount some of the captured Caliphate super-warheads to our own detonators. We’ll give them a taste of their own medicine and level everything within a couple clicks of the Vatican. Then we just drop in and mop up. Keep the operation simple.”
“Ah, that’s a complicated technical task. Perhaps with some more time…”
Kat just stared Washington down. “Because otherwise, I don’t see why we need you around. Can you get us a dozen weapons ready by midnight, or do we need to make alternative arrangements?” She grew instantly calm and collected. In Washington’s short acquaintance with her, she always did that just before killing a man.
“Uh, of course. No problem. Piece of pie, right?”
“That’s piece of cake.”
“I like pie better. Especially cherry.”
Kat squeezed his soft, giant hand. “Help us get this thing back and I’ll never doubt you again.”
General Andre frowned. “Okay, but there’s still the problem of delivering the ordinance. No rocket nor cruise missile would stand a chance of getting through their insane point defenses.”
Kat and Dore shared a grin. He piped in. “You still have some fighters left, don’t you? We’ll drop ‘em like old-fashioned iron bombs. Powerful as these Caliphate warheads are, we just need to get them within a half kilometer of the target and bye bye drones.”
Andre grabbed a binder and ran th
rough his dwindling list of resources. “I could scrounge up a dozen or so aircraft, but how could I give such an order? It’s a guaranteed suicide mission for the crews.”
Kat grabbed his sleeve. “Let the pilots know what’s at stake and you won’t be short of volunteers. I’m positive of that.”
“How can you be so sure? We’ve lost so many already.”
“Dying isn’t the hard part. Death is easy to find nowadays. Now an end that makes a difference though? That’s rare. You’re not throwing these pilots away. You’re giving them a chance to be heroes. Believe me, they’ll thank you for the honor.”
General Andre just nodded as the operators swarmed to their feet and hustled for the hangar. “Is that what you’re looking for, Sergeant? An honorable death?”
Kat dropped her shoulders for a second. “No. That’s what my husband and daughter had.” She spun around and popped a blood vessel in her eye as she squeezed her new assault rifle.
“Screw honor. I want blood.”
Suwannee River Trading Post
Annie Rand waded through the adoring crowd, pumping hands two at a time, but skipped her prepared speech. The time for pretty talk had long passed. Her beaming smile evaporated the moment she escaped the throng and stepped inside the commune’s central gazebo. Twenty or so giddy faces waited for her around the ceremonial campfire.
Ignoring her grim mood, the assembled leaders of the largest independent towns in the tri-county area rose and gave a standing ovation. Some grey-haired man in a High Springs police uniform fiddled with his hearing aid and surged forward. He clasped both wrinkled hands over hers and pumped hard.
“Eighty-five percent of the popular vote? Amazing! Congratulations, Ms. President. I think I speak for everyone when I say you have our support right down the line. There’s no one else we’d rather see running this new government.”
The former high priestess of the Mother Gaia homestead hugged her commune’s oldest ally and plastered on a smile...while hissing in his ear. “You son of a bitch. It helps when I’m running unopposed. Were you behind the sudden drop out of my rivals? Most of them were far more qualified. I swear, one of these days I’m going to pay you back for making me the sacrificial lamb.”
Sheriff Greene gave his best ‘aw shucks shrug. “I don’t rightly know what you’re talking about, ma’am. All I know is that you’ve earned the title. Who else could have saved our backsides from Heinrich’s goons?”
Rand gazed past him and locked eyes with Colonel Brown, leaning against a beam in the far corner like a coiled cobra. “Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you everyone, but let’s give credit where credit’s due. Colonel Brown? Take a bow, please. You and your militia have worked miracles!”
Brown curled his lip and trumped to the middle of the room. “We don’t have time for this back-clapping shit. Are we going to start the briefing or what? I need to get back to my people. The Feds have reorganized and they’re probing the border harder than ever. We’re not out of danger yet. All signs point to the enemy launching a major offensive any day now.”
Rand twirled her hand around the patio. “You’re absolutely right, as usual. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say the Confederacy’s first official high council meeting won’t be ceremonial. I’ve called you all together for a council of war.”
All but one of the town representatives nodded, even if they squirmed in their lawn chairs. The mayor of Chiefland, the next largest farm town twenty miles south, shuffled his feet and raised his hand. “Ah, no disrespect, ma’am, but we’ve already endorsed your recruiters as you demanded. Your militia took dozens of our young men as volunteers. We’re happy to send you plenty of nitrogen-rich fertilizer and sulfur for your homemade bombs and ammo, but I don’t see what else we can offer. I was under the impression we’d be discussing collaborative public works projects and trade opportunities. Don’t you have more than enough peacekeepers already?”
Rand ignored the other town leaders. With the dam of dissent busted, they were busy clearing their throats and screwing up the courage to complain as well. “Mayor, we don’t have any ‘peacekeepers.’ What we do have is a real army, which is sadly not anywhere close to being the largest or best equipped in the region. Your town has a population of what, 2,000? You can do better than a few dozen fighters. Don’t forget the one hundred credit sign-up bonus. That should go a long way to compensating their families for lost labor.”
The town boss threw up his hands. “More funny money that can only be spent at your trade center? No, that’s not the point. Look, I get that these are dangerous times. That’s why we’re eager to support your mutual defense pact, but please be reasonable. If you subtract the women and those under 18 or over 40, we only have a couple hundred young men available. Naturally, that’s the cream of our work force and Lord knows there’s no shortage of jobs. How are we supposed to get the power back on, the fields harvested and the water wells dug before winter if they all go off to play army?”
Brown stepped in as the rest of the council murmured even louder. He didn’t shout, but his command voice shut up the crowd. “Our recruiting standards are quite flexible. We can’t afford to be picky. Anyone over the age of 16 who can shoulder a rifle and march 15 k’s in three hours with a 50-pound ruck is eligible to enlist.”
“You want women and teenagers too? You can’t be serious.”
Brown locked his hands behind his back, more to hide his clenched fists than as a show of respect. “Don’t forget politicians. I bet even you could pass muster.” Brown glanced down at the politico’s potbelly. “After a few weeks in our basic training program, I guarantee you’ll lose that spare tire. Nothing we can do for that pussy of yours though.”
The mayor’s face twitched, but he wisely turned his ire on the petite woman in a pantsuit and rhinestones standing behind the hulking warrior. “I swear you enjoy playing Napoleon-a. Let’s not forget who got us into this mess. You people were the ones that provoked Heinrich. Your private army even drew first blood! We were minding our own business and trying to stay neutral. Now we’re all targets, thanks to your damn cowboy diplomacy!”
He scrambled to his feet and screeched at the other townsfolk. “Am I the only one that realizes this obsession with total war is insane?” One or two shook their heads and some contemplated their navels, but most studied Rand.
Like vultures searching for any sign of weakness.
The minutes-old president shoved past Brown and rested a gentle hand on the mayor’s shoulder. He turned back towards her and ran some fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, ma’am. This is all so new. It’s just that we need to find another way. It’s nothing personal. I mean no disrespect, but this is too much. I cannot support your plan if…”
Still steadying his shoulder, Rand brought the other hand out of her pocket. Her tone dripped sweet reasonableness, even as she shoved a .38 snub-nosed revolver against the mayor’s temple.
“You know quite well there was no choice but to strike first. The Feds gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to surrender or die. So our Minutemen and women took responsibility and paid the down payment for every independent town’s freedom. They fought and sacrificed for everyone here, in the belief that we just needed more time. So help me God, Gaia and everything in between, I will make damn sure their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”
Rand kept the gun to his head, but made eye contact with every other town leader around the fire. “Now I apologize if I misled anyone and gave the impression that this was a debate. We don’t have time to discuss the matter. The wolves are at the gates. What part of ‘collective defense’ was unclear? This is why we insisted that each town hold a vote prior to membership. As I recall, 90% of Chiefland’s voters were in favor. The matter has already been decided. The only question still open is what to do with traitors?”
Somehow the pasty-white man grew even more translucent. “Traitor? Do… You war mongers are even worse than—”
Brown seized the man by the collar, but Rand soothed him
with a purr. “Stand down, Colonel. I can handle my own dirty work. Stick to military affairs and leave the boring politics to me.”
Rand jabbed the pistol between the mayor’s ribs, or as near as she could tell with his ample padding. “Now get out of here. You’re expelled from the trading post. You have sixty seconds to send in a new representative or your town will no longer be considered part of this union.”
A flicker of rage shined through the mayor’s fear. Rand curled her finger around the trigger. Two different mayors jumped up and snagged the angry man by the arms. “Get the hell out of here. She’s right. We don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Like flicking a switch, Rand went back to statesman mode. “All right. Now where were we? Yes, the new recruiting drive.”
The weapon disappeared and Rand swapped it with her ever-handy clipboard.
“Just to be clear, we won’t take draftees into the new Free American Army. Only volunteers. Colonel Brown was quite clear on this point and I’m inclined to agree. Never mind the absurd moral dichotomy of defending a free nation with a slave army. Logistics is the key problem. We simply don’t have enough weapons to waste them on those that aren’t willing to fight. That said, you all need to push harder than ever to get your people involved if we’re going to fend off Heinrich’s barbarian hordes. Ten percent of your population is the recruitment goal. If that sounds like too much, then remember that the Fed’s manpower quota is 25% from every town they conquer. Most importantly, we need these warriors and all the weapons and ammo you can scrounge up here by tomorrow morning. Any town that hasn’t sent a new batch of fighters by 0900 will be considered in secession and no longer protected by the alliance. You’ll be on your own.”
The Caliphate Invasion Page 35
