Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues]

by Knight, Stephen

  “We don’t know anything, I agree,” Mulligan said, “but if something happened to them early on, we would know about it already, or we’d be totally in the dark. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for her to have been taken down, and then find her radio to key it once and say nothing.”

  “True,” Andrews said. He looked back at the intelligence station. “Still ...”

  “Still it’s disconcerting, but it is what it is,” Mulligan said, filling in the dead space. “If something went down, it happened so fast she wasn’t able to transmit anything, presuming she’s still in range. If it’s nothing to do with her, then we’re still in the same place as we were before. Right?”

  “Right,” Andrews said.

  Mulligan nodded. “Okay. Roust me if something more comes across. All right?”

  “You got it, Sarmajor.”

  Mulligan returned to the sleeping compartment and closed the shield door behind him. Andrews sighed and continued listening through his headset. He heard nothing aside from occasional atmospheric hiss. He reached for his coffee mug and eased himself into the station’s chair and got ready to do a whole lot of nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The rig was holding up like a champ.

  Laird had babied the vehicle after leaving the replenishment site as he and Slattery sat in the front office and maneuvered it through the California countryside on their way to the freeway. SCEV Four’s tracks were still clearly visible as the terrain had been a bit muddy when it departed, so it was no problem to follow the trail of broken soil and ripped up grass. That made it easier for Laird to focus on hand-driving the machine, alert for any sign of pending failure that he might be able to detect through the control column while Slattery kept his eyes on the engineering and operations displays. It was a sunny day outside, and as the sun rose higher into the blue sky, the wispy high-altitude clouds that stretched across the heavens began to break up and disappear.

  It took a little less than an hour to get to the nearest interstate, and sure enough, SCEV Four’s muddy tire tracks were still visible in the sunlight. Laird had no difficulty figuring out where the rig had met the highway, so he merely replicated its path and mounted the cracked asphalt. There were a few cars and trucks rotting away in the travel lanes, but when the missiles had flown the traffic was moving outside of peak travel hours. There was lots of open space for them to roll with, and Laird gently eased the column forward. The SCEV accelerated smoothly, picking up speed until it hit forty miles per hour. Laird held it there, listening to the distant drone of the engines and the wail of the knobbed tires as they spun across the pavement.

  “Sir, we’re gonna take all week to get there at this speed,” Slattery said.

  “I agree with that assessment,” Cobar said over the intercom. Laird had ordered the entire rig sealed for the time being, separating the compartments from each other.

  “Let’s not get too carried away, guys,” Laird replied. He checked the radar, ensuring it was dialed back to five-mile ranging. He needed it for the time being, but he didn’t necessarily need it strobing objects that were twenty-five miles away. They were in an SCEV, not a supersonic jet.

  “Jim, what are you afraid of here?” Kelly chided him over the ICS.

  “I’m afraid of a lot of things right now ... the front end falling off, a compressor stall that causes a containment failure, the black water tank backfilling into the sink. I’m getting a feel for the rig, guys. So take it easy on me, okay?” Laird said.

  “Come on, Mister Man!” Kelly said with a laugh. “Get on that stick and start eating up some miles!”

  “If Mister Man can’t do it, Sergeant Slattery can,” Slattery said, wiggling his fingers in the air as he held his right hand over the copilot’s control column.

  “Touch that stick and I’ll slap your hand,” Laird said.

  “I’ll open a complaint with Walleyes,” Slattery said.

  “Yeah, like he could save you.” Laird sighed and looked at the vital systems data on the center display. Nothing was out of plane. As a matter of fact, the SCEV was running at lower temperatures than the old rig did. The ride was stiff as a board, but that was to be expected. The vehicles weren’t exactly developed to give a Bentley-smooth ride. He slowed the rig a bit to maneuver around a dead tractor trailer, then slowed even more when he came upon an accident site. Looked like several autonomous vehicles had piled up on each other, probably killed outright by the electromagnetic pulse so severely that they couldn’t even brake. Some of them still contained mummified corpses, barely visible through the milky-white windows.

  Is that what Mike and the others look like somewhere up the road? he asked himself.

  That did it. Laird sat up in his armored wing seat and twisted his head from one side to the other, relaxing the kinks that had been building up in his neck since leaving the replenishment site. The rig was ready. The crew was ready. It was time to get shit done.

  “Okay, dudes. Opening her up. Crew, rig for high-speed transit. You have two minutes to tie down anything that’s loose, including yourselves.”

  Slattery tightened the straps on his harness. “Hey sir, all set here!”

  “Captain, we’re good to go back here,” Kelly replied over the ICS.

  “Jordello, take a second and check those Hellfires and drones,” Laird responded. “I know they were lashed down good before we left, but I want you to double-check. Do it now.”

  “Roger, wait.” She came back half a minute later. “Everything’s still secure. We’re good to roll back here.”

  “Cobar, anything to report from your side?”

  “Uh, negative. The rig is operating as expected. Everything’s nominal. Slattery, give me a cross-check?”

  “Good to go from the front office,” Slattery responded.

  “All right, crew. Settle in. We’ve got some open road ahead of us, so let’s do what we can.” Laird eased the control column forward, and the rig responded just as he’d expected. He was conservative in his approach, and he kept an eye on the turbine gas temperature readings displayed in the heads-up display before him. So long as they did not climb past one thousand nine hundred degrees, everything was fine. Anything higher than that meant the hot sections of the engines—where atomized fuel was compressed and ignited—were about to fail, resulting in engine destruction at least or a full-on fire at worst. The twin power plants climbed up to one thousand sixty degrees and held there in parity, running a good two hundred degrees cooler than what he was used to. But power output was normal, and that was all good by him.

  In response, the SCEV sprinted to a continuous speed of sixty-eight miles per hour. The tires roared as they rolled across the pavement, and Laird continuously moved the rig from side to side in order to avoid dead traffic that was rotting in place on the freeway. Beside him, Slattery squirmed in his seat.

  “Hey sir, no real need to highball is there?” he asked.

  “What, I was going too slow before and now I’m going too fast?” Laird replied. “What is it with you white boys? Grow a pair, guy!”

  “I’m trying, but they keep retracting,” Slattery said.

  Laird laughed as pushed the control column to its stop. There wasn’t much more for the SCEV to give, but the speed increased to an even seventy-two miles per hour and held there. Turbine gas temperature was good, as were N1 and N2. Laird felt a thrill crackle across his chest. It was abnormally rare for an SCEV to travel this fast, and he was loving every second of it. He felt like a kid who had been granted a night out in his dad’s car, so of course he had to push the pedal to the metal and luxuriate in the sensation of high-speed travel. There was no California Highway Patrol to pull him over, and there wasn’t even a father’s stern demeanor to contemplate. All that lay before him was mostly open road, and a copilot who was a little flummoxed by his commander’s sudden assent to open it up and get things done.

  “Don’t ask for something you really don’t want, Slattery,” Laird said, fully in the gr
oove as he kept the control column pinned forward in the max power position. “Because, son, you are just never going to be satisfied.”

  “I know that now,” Slattery said, his voice barely more than a low moan.

  “What, you going to puke?”

  “No, but I might shit my pants.”

  Laird snorted. “Jordello, Cobar ... what’s the status back there?”

  “I wish you could go faster,” Kelly replied.

  “You always were a floozie,” Laird told her.

  “I’m good, but wondering when we’re going to take off,” Cobar said.

  “Is that you wimping out, Cobar?” Laird asked.

  “No, sir. It’s me wanting to go faster.”

  Laird laughed. “Maybe you should be up here instead of Slattery, then.”

  “Jim, if we can keep this up even intermittently, we could be at the rendezvous in about three days,” Kelly said. “I’d like to ask that we go for that.”

  “Agreed,” Laird replied.

  “Let’s activate the autopilot and see what it does for us. If the delta between what you’re doing and what George does isn’t that great, that would tell us a lot.”

  Laird sighed. The autopilot on an SCEV—nicknamed George since the old days of aviation—was a conservative device. It computed a rig’s course and speed by taking a mixture of MMR inputs and vehicle configurations, such as weight, into account. The end result was always reduced speed, and Laird wasn’t ready to give up the stick just yet.

  “In a bit,” Laird replied. “We’ve got a lot of open road ahead of us, and I’m not willing to give it all up to the computers. Trust me, we’re going to be making better time now than we would under George.”

  “You’ll have to give it up sometime,” Kelly said.

  “Sure, when Girlie-Man Slattery takes over, then George will probably have us moving as fast as we’re likely to go.”

  “Hey now,” Slattery said.

  Laird grinned as he peered out through the view ports. Even though the freeway was mostly clear, there were still obstacles to maneuver around. He remained cautious. Even with the millimeter wave radar and laser tracking systems, there were still enough obstructions to strike and possible pitfalls to drive into. Just because SCEV Four had presumably navigated the same course without incident didn’t mean he would, so he was especially careful because of the rig’s speed. Time was of the essence, but if they didn’t get to the rendezvous site alive, then it would all have been for naught.

  Stay straight and drive, son, he told himself. He settled down into silence as he concentrated on the task at hand, maneuvering the rig across the freeway as necessary. Slattery finally loosened up as well and went back to scanning the displays, keeping an eye on the rig’s vital systems as it plowed across the nuclear landscape. The sky remained cobalt blue, and the rig’s course continued due north. Laird figured that for now, that was as good as things were going to get.

  SCEV Five was back in action.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The attackers were rough with her even after they’d deprived her of all her gear, which Leona had expected. Two of them held her down and removed her clothing, stripping her naked. She fought with them, of course, using every tactic she’d been taught, but there were too many of them. The more she hurt them, the greater they returned the favor. She finally blacked out when a woman kicked her right in the face. When she came to, she tasted blood in her mouth.

  “Man, that’s the cleanest pussy I’ve ever smelled,” said a small nebbish of a man with a bald head and long, stringy hair. He knelt between her legs, which were held apart by a man and a woman. His face was mostly obscured by a long, matted beard, and he wore wire-rim glasses that were bent and crooked. He held his fingers beneath his nose and inhaled deeply, then stroked her groin. “I mean, check it out, this bush is even trimmed!”

  Leona spit out a tooth and tore her leg free from the man who had a hold on her ankle. She booted the little man kneeling between her legs right in the crotch with as much force as she could, driving him back. It was a hefty hit, as she was prone and barely moved across the prickly grass after her foot made contact. He howled as his glasses flew off his head. He grabbed his family jewels as he fell onto his side in agony, collapsing against a likewise filthy woman who had been holding onto Leona’s left ankle. The woman’s grip loosened, and Leona turned toward her, snapping a kick right across her head. She then went into overdrive, fighting and pulling with all her strength against the others who held on to her arms. They resisted her efforts, but they hadn’t been expecting her to fight with such fervor, and Leona managed to free one of her arms. The woman who had kicked her in the face reached for her with a snarl, and Leona lashed out, punching her directly in the jaw, probably shattering it as pain coruscated across her knuckles.

  More people surrounded her then, punching and kicking. Leona blocked and hit back, but it was a losing battle. She was hopelessly outnumbered, and even though many of the men and women closing in on her looked half-starved, they had collective mass on their side. She saw stars again as a man clocked her right in the face, and she fell back to the ground, nose broken, right eye socket blazing in the most intricate pain she had felt. For a moment, images of San Jose came back, pouring across her mind’s eye as the memories of being captured by Law’s people rushed back.

  I can force you to speak, you know. How do you like the pain? Should I make it worse?

  She heard Law’s voice in her head even as a loud buzzing filled her ears. She was only distantly aware of rough hands rolling her over, pinning her arms behind her back. She felt detached from it all, as if what was happening to her body was occurring far away and she was but a detached observer. Even the taste of her blood in her mouth and the searing agony of her fractured orbital seemed distant, remote. Another flurry of blows rained down on her, but the pain they invoked was muted, indistinct, as unimportant to her as a thunderstorm somewhere over Japan.

  Leona passed out.

  ***

  “Hey, First Lieutenant. Wake up.” A foot prodded her in the side. “You with me?”

  Leona opened her eyes, or at least one of them. One side of her face was swollen and distended, and her eyelids couldn’t move beneath the engorged flesh. Something felt familiar. Her vision was blurry, but the smell of oil and the sensation of a particular pattern beneath the left side of her face seemed recognizable. It took her a moment to process the sensory input. She was lying on an anti-skid surface, like what coated the floors of an SCEV.

  She was prodded again, harder this time. “Come on, wake the fuck up. You’re not that badly hurt.”

  Leona groaned and tried to sit up. Her hands were bound behind her back. She became aware then of a burning pain in her crotch. She knew then that she’d been violated, but an instant later the shame and anger she felt were eclipsed by the more severe agony of her shattered cheek and that of several broken teeth. She moaned against her will as her tongue instinctively moved around her mouth, taking inventory. Her incisors were broken, reduced to sharp, jagged edges. She hurt everywhere, but her mouth and her cheek were paramount.

  “Fuck,” she hissed.

  “Yeah, you got worked over pretty well. From what I hear, you were about to get fucked up the ass after they were done with your cunt. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and you were spared a walk down the dirt road. Sorry about that, but prime examples of womanhood are tough to come by these days.” There was a pause, then she was prodded again. “Hey, you’re being addressed by a superior officer. I swear, when they let females and shemales in the Army, the world went to shit. Wake the fuck up, troop. Last time I’m going to ask nicely.”

  Leona moaned again and squeezed her good eye shut before opening it again. Her vision slowly cleared. She had some trouble processing what she saw, but it finally clicked. She was lying on the floor of an SCEV’s second compartment, looking toward the dinette. Beneath her was in fact the diamond-patterned anti-skid surface that lined th
e walking surfaces of every rig, and there was a slight tang in the air— POL, the acronym for petroleum, oil, and lubricants accented by a hint of body odor. She heard a distant hum. An APU, singing its song behind copious amounts of sound shielding.

  “Where the fuck ...” she muttered, unable to complete the question because her teeth hurt so God damned much.

  “Okay, she’s awake. Get her up. Park her there.”

  Hands grabbed Leona again, but she was too tired and too battered to resist. She was hoisted up, and then rather unceremoniously dumped onto cushions that were only nominally softer than the floor she’d been lying on. A wave of dizziness overtook her and she fell forward, striking something hard and unyielding with her forehead. She could only grunt in response as she waited for the world to stop spinning.

  “Yeah, you probably have an award-winning concussion there, LT. Try and push past that, all right?”

  Leona moaned again as she struggled to sit up. “Where ... the fuck am I?”

  “What, you don’t know? Open your eyes. Or the one eye, anyway ... you might not be able to see shit through the other one. You got clocked pretty hard out there, but in all fairness, you were resisting.”

  The world slowly settled, and Leona was able to gather her wits about her. She pushed through the pain and opened her one good eye. To her surprise, she was in fact sitting at the dinette of an SCEV’s second compartment. She wore her uniform trousers and a T-shirt, but that was it—not even socks. Everything else was as it should have been in the compartment, all the equipment was where she expected it to be. The big screen display was active, and it showed a quad chart of pictures from multiple drones. One of them was of Sherwood, and a high-fidelity camera was scanning the community. The data crawl along the bottom of the image revealed the drone’s position and flight data; it was almost twelve thousand feet up, and was using video only to scan the settlement.

  They’re running multiple systems in parallel ...