Broken Arrow: Navigator Book Four

by SD Tanner

  He shook his head. “No way. Ten navs against thousands of critters is impossible. You were at NORAD and you know what happened there.”

  “What about the critterskin suits?” Ark asked.

  They were sitting inside of Dunk’s office where he was presiding at the head of the table. “We haven’t got many of them and there’s not enough time to make more.”

  Screwing up his damaged face, Ark replied, “How many have we got?”

  Dunk shrugged. “Twenty at best.”

  “Then we need to give one to as many battle teams as we can. The critters didn’t see Tank and Lexie at Pueblo Pintado. All we need is one nav to make it to the bottom of the nest.”

  Ark was implying that everyone else was expendable and he shot him a surprised look. “Are you saying that everyone else is fodder?”

  “Yeah. Everyone on the mission will have a single objective and that is to blow the bottom of the nest. It’ll take every single nav to get into a nest and we’ll be lucky if even one makes it to the bottom. Whichever nav is wearing the critter suit will be the one carrying the bomb.”

  Leon nodded. “It’s a one-way ticket.”

  Giving him a wide grin, Hood hooted, “Booyah!”

  By way of reply, Leon fist bumped Hood. Watching their boyish antics, he decided the sanity of their army had always been questionable, but now he was starting to think they’d all gone bat shit crazy. He supposed the past three months had destroyed everything they’d believed to be true. Where mere months earlier they had been the dominant species, an unknown enemy had put them in their place and they weren’t taking it well. Less concerned about learning he was inferior to something else; he had no intention of losing to an enemy that had yet to show its face. At this point, the insanity of their plan was irrelevant and he just didn’t want to lose.

  Nodding to Ark, he said, “Yeah, okay. Let’s talk armaments. What do we need to take out the bottom of the nest?”

  Only Dunk had fully analyzed the footage brought back by the baby bot. “The bottom of the nest is a chamber. The critter inside of it only vaguely resembles the ones we know. It’s at least twenty times bigger and the one in Pueblo Pintado has human faces on it.”

  Dayton interrupted Dunk by adding, “We think it’s absorbed the people into its body, which might explain why it’s so large, otherwise we’re guessing it’s made of the same rubbery material as a critter. It’s certainly shaped like the spider variety, just a much bigger version.”

  After nodding to Dayton, Dunk continued, “The creature is tightly packed inside of the chamber, which means the person who detonates the bomb won’t stand a chance of getting out alive.”

  “Any decent-sized explosion will send a fireball through the tunnels that’ll make them collapse,” Ark said.

  He nodded to Ark. “We’re gonna need to take as much firepower into the nests as we can. That means standard weapons with uranium-tipped bullets, flamethrowers and the lasers. As for the bombs…well, there’s a lot of stuff we can use to blow the hell out of a nest. RPGs, grenades, C4…”

  “Don’t forget dynamite,” Stax added. “I’ve got guys who know how to use that pretty well.”

  “I’ll bet,” Hood replied with a wink. “Isn’t that how you guys go fishing?”

  Ignoring their sparring, Ark said, “We should also load up with standard thirty and fifty-cal bullets.”

  Frowning and sounding confused, he replied, “Why? We know the thirty-cals don’t work.”

  “A wall of bullets will at least push them back, plus it’s better than running out of ammo,” Leon said.

  Dunk nodded. “We’ll ramp up production on the guns and ammo.”

  “What about transportation?” He asked.

  Needing his Navigator gear to walk, Ark was still wearing his suit without the weapons and armor, making him creak noisily when he leaned against the meeting table. “Anything will do. Our battle teams just need to get into the nest. Based on what we saw in Albuquerque, there are less critters around, so it’s pedal to the metal, get themselves supplied and into the nests ASAP. We need to give each battle team as much as we can before they leave, but then they’ll need to scavenge for the rest on their way to the nests. Those headed to the ones furthest away should look for what they can use closer to their target.”

  “How are you expecting them to get inside of the nest?” He asked.

  Ark shrugged, making his gear creak even more loudly. “They’re gonna have to shoot their way in. If they have a nav in a critter suit, then that’s the guy they need to protect. It’s his job to reach the bottom of the nest and blow it.”

  “Or she,” Lexie said bluntly.

  “No, it won’t be a woman, hon,” Ark replied equally as directly. “It’s going take strength to get to the bottom of that nest and I recommend they use a tank nav if they’ve got one.”

  It would be a mad race to outrun the critters to reach the pyramid and then get inside. No matter how close their vehicles were to the pyramid, just bridging the distance to the first hole they could find would probably kill almost all of them. Hoping the shadow Navigators could help them make it into the nest, he asked, “What about comms?”

  Amber replied, “We can keep the grid running, but we don’t have enough shadow navs for twenty-five battle teams much less fifty, and we’ll lose comms from the moment they go underground.”

  “What about the repeaters?”

  “We don’t have enough of them, plus I’m not sure what we could do for anyone anyway.”

  “At least we’ll know if they’ve succeeded.”

  Ark raised his ungloved hand. “We don’t need to see what they’re doing to know if they’ve succeeded. If the critters drop like they did in CaliTech then it means they’ve got the job done.”

  He listened to what little they had to give their battle teams. Ark was expecting them to fend for themselves, offering no further support once they left CaliTech. It wasn’t a good plan, but he couldn’t think of a better one. “Okay, so how do we assign battle teams to targets? What’s the logic?”

  To his surprise, it was Jo who answered. “Send the weakest teams furthest out.”

  Turning to face her, he asked, “Why?”

  “Our best teams are most likely to succeed and maybe that’ll change what the other nests do. When Ark blew even part of a nest the creature shut down, and maybe if we destroy enough of them then they all will.”

  Jo had been a Commander in the Albuquerque police force and she was good at organizing their people. In the past few months they’d grown close enough for him to consider her a significant part of his new life. Had things been different he would have wined and dined her, but under their new circumstances, they’d simply elected to share a bed saying nothing much about it.

  He gave her a wry look. “That’s a long shot.”

  With a short laugh that didn’t sound as if she was amused, she replied, “This whole situation is a long shot. We’re proposing to take on an enemy that has pretty much wiped us out. What little logic that can be applied should be, but let’s accept that anything we do is unlikely to save us.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve taken on a losing proposition, but we generally don’t tell the troops that.”

  Hood snorted. “You don’t have to tell them when they’re fucked. They work that out long before the brass does.”

  Being ordered to blow the bottom of a nest at any cost meant there was nothing left to lose. It was an act of desperation and they were offering their troops no more than a fond farewell. Hoping to give them something more than a goodbye hug, he asked, “What about medical support?”

  “A suicide mission with medical support,” Lexie said dryly. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  Ignoring Lexie, he turned and raised his eyebrows at Dayton. Returning his enquiring look with one of disbelief, Dayton said, “I don’t have any doctors. I mean, all I have are scientists and you all know what they’re like.”

  Sigh
ing unhappily, he replied, “So, that’s a no on medical support?”

  Dayton gave him a weary look. “I’ll talk to them, but much like most of Dunk’s crew they’re not entirely sane.” Flicking an apologetic expression at Dunk, he added, “No disrespect intended.”

  Smirking and sounding amused, Dunk said, “With brilliance comes eccentricity. Without their insanity you people wouldn’t be able to mount any sort of attack.”

  Dunk was another person he’d gotten to know a lot better over the past few months. He’d come to accept that the man was a genius and finally understood why people had thrown money at him to bring his visions into reality. Although well grounded, Dunk was a dreamer who could see a path to make the impossible come true. If it weren’t for him they wouldn’t have stood a chance, and most of the people sitting at the table would already be dead. With his mind working at levels that no one else could see, Dunk didn’t connect well with the rest of the human race. He wasn’t a likeable character, but he suspected compared to him, everyone else were the equivalent of chimps. If anything, the man showed a surprising patience for people who could barely keep up with him.

  “Okay, what’s the timing on this?”

  “We can’t get this done fast enough,” Ark said confidently. “The longer we wait the more people they take, plus more ships could turn up.”

  “It’ll take us a week to get everyone assigned and on the road.”

  Jo nodded. “I’ll prepare an info pack. It’ll include locations of the nests and the likely places for scavenging, plus a list of the battle teams and their assignments.”

  “Good idea. They might be able to help one another out there.”

  Lexie shook her head. “What about the survivors? What are we supposed to do with them?”

  It was Ark who replied and said firmly, “We can’t help them.”

  “But…”

  “No, Lex,” Tank said equally as bluntly. “We have one order and one mission, and that’s to destroy the nests at any cost. If we fail then NORAD will take out everything until they run out of bombs, and if it comes to that then everyone dies anyway.”

  Taking Ark’s hand, she asked softly, “Is this what you want?”

  Shaking his head, Ark replied, “No, but it’s all we have left. We’ve run out of options, so it’s either this or we let them take us and that’s not acceptable.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: We could be heroes (Dayton)

  “They’re going out in force. It’s a suicide mission.”

  One-of-One gave him a questioning look. “If that’s what they’re doing then why do they need medical support?”

  Knowing he’d just listened to good men and women planning to die, he’d left the battle meeting in a state of shock. It was what wasn’t discussed that bothered him the most. No one had talked about how to deal with the injured or what would happen when the Navigators returned. During the meeting, it had slowly dawned on him that no one was expecting to survive, so no post-battle plan was required. It went against everything he believed in. As an oncologist he was used to dealing with death sentences, but no matter how tough the case had been, he would research until he found his patient a viable way to go forward, no matter how unlikely it was to succeed. Without medical support, their Navigators would die even if their injuries were survivable. While others took the brunt of the fight, there would be at least thirty medical personnel sitting on their asses in CaliTech and that wasn’t acceptable to him.

  Frowning at her, he sighed deeply. “Because there are people out there who need our help. I’m sure Ark would assign us a couple of navs and we could get supplies from nearby hospitals.” Allowing his frustration to show, he added angrily, “I’m sick of not being able to help anyone. The people here died of their injuries after the attack. We have two transformed people in the room next door and Cassie’s gone again. This isn’t a hospital, it’s a morgue.”

  While he argued with the medical staff in the reception area, Jake was standing outside of the door to Cassie’s room. “I’ll go with you. I’m a nav.”

  “But you can’t shoot,” One-of-One replied bluntly.

  “If you want accuracy then maybe not, but I’m good enough to break into hospitals and get what you need.”

  “You’ll die.”

  Flicking his hand at the door to the room with the two transformed people, he replied dourly, “Better dead than that.”

  One-of-One had always been detached, and where it had been an eccentricity he could live with, now she was making him angry. “How can you all sit and do nothing when you know mankind is ending?”

  “Some people will survive. There’ll be enough to start again.”

  “But you’re all doctors. I mean, most of you are better qualified than I am. Why don’t you want to help people? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Eyeing him blankly, she replied, “Some of us have borderline personality disorders, all of us are introverted, and more than a few are on antipsychotic meds. We didn’t fail to practice medicine because we didn’t want to. Most of us weren’t allowed to.”

  One of the lab techs standing next to her nodded sagely. “It’s true.” With a vague wave of her hand, she added, “I wouldn’t let any of these people treat my cat.”

  Another tech snorted softly. “That’s because you like your cat. Why do you care about how badly we treat anyone else?”

  Desperately trying to catch the thread of what was an almost positive position, he said, “He’s right. You’re all that’s left, so why not? It’s not as if anyone can go anywhere else. They’ll be grateful for anything you can do so you’ll be heroes.” Vaguely pointing in the direction of the helipad, he said, “There’s helicopters out there. I don’t know where the pilots are, but they’re here somewhere. We could provide medical support to the entire battalion.”

  “But they grounded the helicopters for a reason,” a woman said dourly. “The critters can fly.”

  He gave the woman a hard stare. “So? The critters are busy loading our people onto ships, so there’s less of them around. Maybe they won’t bother us, and even if they do, at least we’ll have tried.”

  Walking out of Cassie’s room, a woman called cheerfully, “I’ll go with you. There’s three real nurses here and we’ll all go.”

  Relief flooded through him. Nurses knew enough to help a patient in pain and to keep them alive until a doctor could get to them. Pointing at the woman as she walked towards the medical supply room, he asked, “She knows she can make a difference, so why don’t you know that?”

  One-of-One frowned. “We do make a difference. Without us the visors wouldn’t work at all.”

  Grabbing her by the shoulders, he stared directly into her grey eyes. “And you’ve done that now. This is the next thing you’re needed for.”

  “If you’re going to use the helicopters then why not use the drones as well?” One of the male techs asked. “They can distribute supplies.”

  He didn’t know why they hadn’t considered using the helicopters and drones, but hoping to encourage the speaker, he nodded enthusiastically. “That’s a great idea and I’ll ask Ark about that.”

  Sounding uncommonly hesitant, One-of-One said, “I’ve never treated a patient before. I was told my bedside manner was…unpleasant…not reassuring…robotic.”

  Not doubting that One-of-One had been accused of those behaviors and more, he shrugged. “It was a different time and place then. Under normal circumstances people expect…consideration, but when it’s an emergency and you’re the only help there is then they won’t care.” Grabbing her hand, he said with genuine sincerity, “Believe me, they really won’t care. They need your skills, so they won’t even notice your bedside manner.”

  For the first time since he’d met her, One-of-One looked lost. It had never occurred to him that with her odd personality she’d probably dealt with a lot of rejection. Tilting his head so he could meet her downturned eyes, he said warmly, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re p
erfect just the way you are. Come with me and you’ll see that no one cares about you having your own way of dealing with the world.”

  Staring back at him, the lost look in her eyes faded, sharpening into an expression he knew well. Harrumphing softly, she shrugged. “We’ll probably all die anyway.” He could see the tension returning to her usually stiff posture and she turned to the group. “Pull together all of the antibiotics, pain meds, fluids, bandages and anything else we can use in an emergency.”

  When nobody moved, One-of-One pushed him out of the way, giving the group an icy stare. “Our job is to explore so that we can make breakthroughs in medical technology. We do that by making a hypothesis and testing it through experimentation.” With a wave of her hand, she added, “This is still our job, but the theater is out there. Stop wasting time and get the supplies together. Some of you will come with me and some of you will stay here to help anyone who makes it back.”

  Still nobody moved and one of the technicians said worriedly, “But we could die out there.”

  With her upper lip curling, One-of-One replied, “You’re a scientist and the greatest discoveries that have ever been made are not in here. Anyone who goes outside will be the first to learn how human cells can be transformed into controllable biological matter. How can you ignore this kind of advancement? How can you not want to be on the forefront of something that will shape our science for hundreds and possibly thousands of years to come?” Drawing a deep breath, she seemed to swell with pride. “We may not survive, but some people will and we’ll leave them a legacy that will change the world forever.” Raising her forefinger, she added, “But first we need to see it for ourselves, then we need to make sure some people live, or everything we’ve done will be wasted.”

  Her argument was not one he would have thought to use, but it was clearly persuasive to a roomful of scientists. With confident nods, the group dispersed intent on preparing a mobile medical team. Turning to One-of-One, he said with genuine gratitude, “Thank you.”