by P. T. Hylton
“It might not sound like, but it is. Look, people think the GMT is all about badass heroics and charging into vampire nests without hesitation. But it’s actually much more about being smart. The best GMT members understand that instinctively. CB got it. Simmons got it. You get it, too.”
“Damn, Captain, that’s quite the compliment.”
“I don’t give it lightly. Here’s an example. About a year back, we had this mission to retrieve these rare electrical components in the old country of South Africa. Owl set us down, and the building looked perfect. The ceiling had caved in, so the whole place was covered in sunlight. All we had to do was walk in and get the parts. CB took one look at the place and called off the mission.”
“What? Why?” Chuck asked.
The others were listening too now, drawn in by her story.
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. He told us it didn’t feel right. So, we left. I bitched and moaned about it, of course, because back then I bitched and moaned about everything. But the veterans on the team didn’t. They trusted CB so much that they didn’t even question the decision. And General Craig trusted CB enough that he backed him up when Councilman Stern threw a fit about the GMT abandoning a mission.”
“Heh,” Ed laughed. “I would have liked to have seen that.”
She looked around at her team. “That’s what makes a great GMT team. You’ve got to trust your instincts and each other enough that you’re willing to walk away from a job just because it doesn’t feel right.”
For the first time in the flight, Wesley spoke. “Then how do you explain Resettlement? It hasn’t felt right from the jump.”
To that, Alex had no answer.
The ships landed in the prison yard. The large open space felt much smaller with the huge transport ship parked in the middle of it. Firefly’s crew ran out the cargo door. He’d brought six engineers with him today. The GMT would be in charge of safety, while Firefly’s crew wired up the daylights.
“How’s the new ride, Captain Eldred?” Alex asked.
“Smooth as New Haven,” Firefly answered with a smile. “Where do you want to start?”
Alex gestured toward cellblock one. “I figure that’s as good a place as any. Think we’ll get more than one building done today?”
“Fleming wants us to shoot for five.”
Alex frowned. She didn’t give a rat’s ass what Fleming wanted. And there was no way she was going to put the safety of her people on the line for his pushy demands. But she wasn’t about to say that. “We’ll see what we can do.”
The engineers hauled a large generator out of the transport ship and set it near the door to Building One. As soon as they turned it on and it rumbled to life, a series of angry howls came from various buildings around them.
“Ah, there it is,” Patrick said. “It’s good to be back.”
The engineers then brought out Brian’s latest design—omnidirectional daylights. The lights were mounted on eight-foot stands and shone a thirty-foot circle of light for three hundred and sixty degrees around it. An engineer plugged one of the lights into the generator with a long extension cord and it immediately lit up.
“And we’re off,” Firefly said.
“Ed,” Alex called. “You want to do the honors?”
“Hell yes, I do,” he said. He shot his brother a gloating look.
“Lucky,” Patrick muttered.
“Chuck, Wesley, stick close to Ed,” Alex ordered.
Ed picked up the daylight by the stand and carried it to the door of Building One, Chuck and Wesley at his side with weapons drawn. He lowered the light, angling it through the doorway. As he made his way down the entry corridor and past the first security checkpoint, a vampire shrieked.
“Looks like we’re in business, Captain,” Ed called from inside. “You should have seen the way this vampire started smoking before it ran off.”
Firefly grinned. “What are we waiting for? Plug in another light.”
“I’m suddenly very attracted to Brian McElroy,” Owl said as she set up the second daylight in the central room of cellblock one.
“Same here,” Patrick agreed.
Now that they had two daylights set up, most of the common area was bathed in artificial sunlight. They’d seen half a dozen vampires scurry either to the basement or into one of the cells when the daylights were brought in. It was testament to their faith in the lights that the entire GMT was comfortable inside the building with the creatures present. Alex had made the engineers wait outside and told them she’d get them when the building was clear.
Chuck scratched at his chin. “I noticed these daylights don’t kill the vampires; they just hurt them.”
Owl nodded. “The way I understand it, the light is more diffused. It would kill a vampire if it were dumb enough to stand in the light for a minute or two. But the purpose of these things is to act as a deterrent. They’re not meant to be fatal.”
Ed held up his rifle and grinned. “Good thing we are.”
Wesley and Alex finished setting up the third light, positioning it for maximum coverage. Once that was done, the team began the dangerous work of clearing out the vampires cowering in the shadows.
“They’re going to be desperate,” Alex reminded them, “and they’ll probably be angry.”
“No different than usual, then?” Wesley asked.
The team spent the next hour sweeping through Building One. Alex’s prediction was right—the vampires behaved even more erratically than usual. Some even moved a few inches into the light to try to nip at the humans.
But the vampires were also cornered, which made them easy targets. Since the walkways outside the cells were safely in the light, the team members could shoot the vampires huddled in the cells without risking being attacked.
In less than an hour they’d cleared out the two above-ground levels. Then they dragged a daylight into the basement and spent fifteen minutes clearing that. All told, they killed fifteen vampires in Building One.
“Yo, Firefly!” Alex called out the doorway. “We’re ready for your brainiacs.”
He frowned. “It’s about time. And I don’t like being called that name, remember?”
Alex grimaced. She’d been making an effort to use his real name, but she still slipped up sometimes. It bugged her that he was so ashamed of his old nickname. It was as if he were trying to deny that his time with the GMT had ever happened.
Firefly’s six engineers hauled their equipment into Building One and went to work, while the GMT stood guard. By midday, they had a generator tied into the old electrical system, a battery backup, and every inch of the building covered in artificial daylight.
“Hot damn,” Firefly said. “I think we have our first livable space.”
Alex suppressed the urge to disagree. Instead, she said, “All right, then let’s move on to Building Two.”
The second building went much like the first, with the GMT setting up omnidirectional daylights in the central area to send the vampires running, then hunting them down and killing them. The difference this time was that Alex hung back a little. Her team was good enough that she didn’t need to micromanage the operation. Instead, she observed while her team did their thing.
Ed and Patrick were as gung-ho and over-the-top excited as ever, keeping count of their kills and bragging about the accuracy of their shots. Wesley was his usual laid-back self. Chuck was slower, but more methodical. He also kept a close eye on his teammates. Not for the first time, Alex noticed that he had leadership potential.
Owl spent most of her time adjusting the daylights, preferring the technology to the action.
All in all, Alex was impressed. They were working as a team. They’d fallen into an easy rhythm that reminded her of the way the GMT had operated back in the days when CB was running things and Simmons and Drew were on the team. It made her smile. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad captain, after all.
Once the building was vampire-free, the engineers came in and got to work.<
br />
Firefly stood next to Alex, the two captains overseeing the mission.
“Your team did a great job today,” he told her.
She was a bit surprised at that. Firefly wasn’t normally one to pass out compliments. “Thank you, Garrett.”
“If we can keep this pace, the whole prison will be ready by the end of the week. Fleming will be ecstatic.”
She lowered her voice a little. “Let me ask you something. Do you think this can work? Like, do you really believe it?”
Now Firefly looked surprised. “Resettlement? Of course, I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Come on, man. You’ve seen the vampires at night. You know what they can do. The others, Fleming, they’ve never seen it with their own eyes, so I get their optimism. But you?”
“I’ve seen Fleming do the impossible before. His plans always work. I believe in him.”
“I did too, once.”
“When we come back here tomorrow, you’ll see,” he said. “These buildings will be free of vampires. This plan is going to work.”
She looked up at him and saw the dark circles around his eyes. “Are you doing okay? Have you been sleeping?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been busy. Between the missions with you and all the other Resettlement stuff, I haven’t had a lot of time.”
“Garrett, listen to me. Fleming’s plans have worked so far, yeah. But maybe sometimes the cost is too great.”
He looked away, the unspoken cost hanging in the air. “And sometimes sacrifices are worth it to accomplish something truly historic.”
Before she could reply, one of the engineers spoke.
“We’re all set here, Captain Eldred. Building Two is good to go. Should we move on to Three?”
Alex glanced at her watch. “No, there’s only an hour of daylight left. I’m calling it. Let’s go home.”
20
The laboratory was a bustle of activity. Brian and Sarah worked side by side near the center of the room, with a dozen techs hurrying around them. Most of the techs appeared to be assembling daylights as Brian worked on the individual components.
Alex was a bit taken aback. In her experience, the lab had always been quiet, a peaceful place where Brian could work on his innovative designs away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the ship. But it appeared that tranquility was a thing of the past.
She walked over to Brian and put a hand on his shoulder. “McElroy, what up?”
He looked up, startled, and Alex smiled. The lab may have changed, but Brian never did.
Although, now that she was looking at him, he looked paler than usual. Thinner, too. It appeared the GMT weren’t the only ones Fleming was pushing to the limit.
“Hey, Alex, what’s up with you?” he asked.
“I just got back from, um, Fort Stearns.” She almost choked on the name. “I was about to grab a bite to eat. Care to join me?”
He glanced down at the work in front of him. “I don’t know. We’re way behind, and—”
“Don’t be an idiot. Even you can’t work all the time. You need a break.”
He nodded slowly. “Maybe a short one.”
Sarah leaned toward them, a friendly smile on her face. “Great idea. Mind if I tag along?”
Brian shook his head. “This is too important for both of us to leave. You keep at it, and you can go when I get back.”
Her smile wavered for a moment. “Come on, boss. We all need to eat.”
“Sorry, Sarah,” he insisted. “I promise I won’t be too long.” With that, he turned and walked away. Alex hurried to catch up to him.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting at a table at Tankards, shoveling cheap but delicious bar food into their mouths.
“I tell you, that woman’s driving me crazy,” Brian said, then took another huge bite. The poor guy was going at the food like he hadn’t seen any in a week.
“Sarah’s that bad, huh?”
He swallowed his food, then answered. “She’s on me like glue. I’m in that lab sixteen hours a day, and I can’t get five minutes of it away from her. And she’s trying way too hard to impress me.”
“You know she’s reporting back to Fleming on you, right?”
“I’m not an idiot, Alex. And even if I were, she’s being pretty damn obvious in her attempts to win me over. She’s constantly touching me, coming up with excuses to be alone with me, stuff like that.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Wow, Brian, sounds like you could finally get laid.”
“Yeah, if I didn’t mind sleeping with a two-faced traitor.” He paused to take another bite. “Speaking of traitors, how are things coming on the Firefly front?”
She laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know, man. He’s tough to read. And Fleming… let’s just say changing the direction of the city and staging a coup is proving to be more difficult than I expected.”
Brian took another bite and she watched him, really looking at his face for the first time since they’d sat down.
“I say this in the kindest possible way, Brian, but you look like absolute shit. You need to take care of yourself, or you’re going to end up in the hospital.”
He looked back at her. “And I mean this in the least creepy way possible, but you look great. How are you dealing with the stress?”
She thought about that a moment. Although she was tired, she hadn’t felt like she was reaching the breaking point, like Brian and Firefly appeared to be. “I think it’s because I’ve been so focused on my team. Seeing them come into their own has been… Well, it’s been exhilarating. My focus has been on training and working with them. On making sure they stay alive.”
Brian was quiet for a minute. “Honestly, even when I do go to bed, I have trouble sleeping. I can’t stop thinking about the friends we’ve lost.”
Alex nodded. To her surprise, tears sprang to her eyes. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Drew, Simmons, and Hope. Hell, even Stearns, though he was a pain in the ass. They died for something, every one of them. If hundreds of more people die during Resettlement, it’ll be like our friends gave their lives for nothing.”
Brian stared down at his plate.
“I just wish Fleming could have seen how our friends died,” she continued. “There’s no way he would be trying to bring more people to the surface if he had seen that firsthand.”
Brian’s voice was thick with venom. “He’d never set foot down there. He’d rather risk other lives than his own. So, he won’t see a vampire until it’s too late. And brining one up here isn’t exactly an option.”
Alex set down her fork, her mouth suddenly wide open.
“What?” he asked. “What did I say?”
“Holy shit, Brian. You’re are a genius, and I'm kind of an idiot."
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
She put her hand over his. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She stood up from her chair. “Finish eating. Then go take a nap. You’ve earned it.”
Brian watched, slack-jawed, as Alex hurried out of the pub.
“What’s this about?” Fleming asked.
“We only need your patience for a few more minutes,” CB said.
Alex, CB, and Fleming walked down a long, sunlit corridor. It hadn’t been that long ago that Alex had taken this walk for the first time herself, but it felt like another lifetime.
They reached the door at the end of the corridor and CB typed a five-digit code into the keypad mounted on the wall.
“Why haven’t I seen this area before?” Fleming asked.
“I promise, you’ll find out in a few moments,” Alex assured him.
CB pulled the door open and gestured inside. “After you.”
Fleming hesitated, and Alex saw a tiny flicker of fear in his eyes. It suddenly struck her that they were asking a lot of him. They’d asked him to accompany two of his subordinates, whom he knew opposed him, to a mysterious room in an isolated part of the ship.
It also said a lot about
Fleming’s unshakeable self-confidence that he’d gone along with them.
After a moment, the flicker of fear disappeared, and Fleming walked into the sunlit room.
“What is all this?” Fleming asked, his voice filled with wonder. He stared at the steel box in the corner.
CB gestured to a monitor on the wall. “See for yourself.”
Fleming turned to the monitor and froze. For the first time since Alex had met him, Fleming was stunned into silence.
The monitor showed the inside of the steel box and the Feral huddled inside.
“My God,” he said finally. “How long has that thing been here? Who the hell brought a vampire aboard my ship?”
“His name’s Frank,” CB said, “and he’s been here from the beginning. He was one of the original crew of New Haven. He volunteered to be used, like a canary in the coalmine, from the old days.”
“I don’t know that reference,” Fleming said.
“We meant to use Frank as a gauge of how the vampires on Earth are doing,” Alex explained. “When he died, we’d know it might be safe to go back to the surface.”
Fleming turned to CB. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”
CB frowned. “It’s a closely guarded secret, for obvious reasons. People might not act rationally if they knew a vampire was on board. Only the head of the City Council, the director of security, and the field commander of the GMT are meant to know about it. Since the transfer of power didn’t follow the, er, normal procedures when you took over, I guess it sort of slipped through the cracks.
Fleming looked back at the monitor and shuddered. “It really is the stuff of nightmares.”
“That’s not all we brought you here to show you,” CB said. He walked over to the cage.
“You’re not going to let it out, are you?” Fleming asked.
CB chuckled. “I’m not a madman, so, no.” He reached into his pack and removed a blood pack he’d gotten from the hospital. He pulled out the sliding metal tray in the door and set the blood pack inside.
“How often do we feed it?” Fleming asked.
“Poor Frank here hasn’t eaten in one hundred fifty years, but that’s about to change.” With that, he slid the tray through to Frank’s side of the cage.
