Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection

by Henry G. Foster

  Carl aimed at the man’s belly. “Sign now or die a slow, painful death.”

  The man didn’t flinch or say anything.

  “Ten. Nine…”

  Finally, the Speaker slowly reached for the pen that laid idly on the desk. “Fine,” he said. He signed the paper with a quick, shaky scratch. “But you’ve just killed Liz Town.”

  Carl ignored him as he folded the signed document and stuffed it in his pocket. “Tie them up, all three. Parade them through the damn streets. This third guy…” Carl pointed at him, stepping closer. “You’re not one of us.”

  Before the man could answer, Sunshine walked up from her spot to the rear, smiling. “That would be the Empire guy. I’ve seen him coming and going in the night. There’s an Empire troop camped in the northwest wildlands, too.”

  After the three had been tied up, Carl patted them down, then checked the desk drawers. In the upper left drawer he found a manila envelope. When he tossed it onto the desk, he realized it was heavier than it looked, and when it landed, it clinked. That got his attention. He carefully opened the envelope and poured the contents onto the desk to find a two-page document and a dozen of the Empire’s gold coins. He picked up the document and read the heading—“Alliance and Peace Treaty Letter of Understanding.”

  Carl growled. “You assholes were really going to do it, weren’t you? And all for some crappy bits of gold? You can’t eat gold, you stupid sonsofbitches.”

  “Now can I kill them?” one of his fighters asked, but his tight voice and clenched jaw told Carl he wasn’t joking around, this time.

  “No. Get them to Kodiak headquarters. Mary Ann calls the shots from here on out. But if they resist or try to run? Kill them. And we’ll send a war party after that troop Sunshine mentioned.”

  Carl’s unit, all of them wildlanders other than him, roughly grabbed the prisoners and forced them downstairs. Diamondback might declare war against Kodiak or Timber Wolf over this, but with Carl’s entire force made up of wildlanders it would be hard to get any sympathy from the other Bands. Diamondback would be fighting on their own—even Wolverine and Puma would join Kodiak against Diamondback if civil war came now. It was checkmate against the coup attempt, the Empire would be in for a nasty surprise, and Pamela was done. Finished.

  * * *

  During breakfast, two of Taggart’s on-loan soldiers approached Michael at another table, and Cassy let out a long breath. To disturb Michael mid-breakfast meant something major was going on and they would no doubt head over to Cassy’s table shortly. She scarfed her food as quickly as she could while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Sure enough, a couple minutes later, Michael got up and then he and the soldiers walked over to her table. Michael sat across from her, frowning.

  Cassy finished chewing her delicious eggs and cheese—the cows were giving milk again, having birthed recently—and said, “Hey Michael. What’s up?”

  “I have some bad news. It seems a couple of the raiders we slaughtered outside Liz Town had kept in hiding and were just spotted linking up with a dozen or so Empire bike troops. They waited an hour, then headed west.”

  Cassy pursed her lips. It wasn’t unexpected that some had escaped, but the other group meeting up with them was news. “Analysis?”

  Michael shrugged. “Hard to say. My guess is that the riders weren’t there for the survivors, but for some other reason. Nothing else makes much sense. Whatever they were waiting for, it didn’t happen or didn’t come back, so the group left and took the battle survivors with them because they were available.”

  “So, the Empire will find out their raiders got slaughtered, and I’d guess that something is going on in Liz Town involving the Empire.”

  Michael nodded. “Whatever it was, it must not have gone according to plan. The locals outside the wall said two of the Empire groups entered Liz Town but never came out. They’re fans of ours right now, so they were happy to share what they had seen. Liz Town ought to bring them in, make another Band.”

  “Not that I don’t agree, but that’s their business. Let’s get some scouts over to Liz Town itself. They’re off the rails lately and I don’t want any nasty surprises.”

  “I’d planned to, as soon as I briefed you. I’m going to set up a few scouts in a picket line east of Liz Town, as well, with orders not to engage, but to report any movement.”

  Cassy bit her lip, worrying the flesh with her teeth, then said, “Yeah, okay. Just make sure we have something between us and Liz Town itself, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Michael said with all seriousness. He often got formal in front of the troops, which irritated her, but he said it was necessary to firmly set the chain of command in the troops’ minds. “I’ll get units moving A.S.A.P.”

  Cassy nodded. After Michael left with the soldiers, she finished her last couple bites of eggs. They had turned cold during her conversation with Michael. Appropriate, she thought, given that the Empire was likely to move up their timetable for invasion, now. She had hoped beyond hope that none of the raiders had escaped, but knew that was unlikely. It just sucked that she had been right.

  * * *

  Ethan powered up the short-range hand radio from his perch atop the hill just outside the livestock fencing, and as he waited, his mind wandered. The way Cassy did things on the farm hadn’t made any sense to him when he had arrived at her farm, but over time he had begun to see the reasons behind many of the little weird ways she did things and why it worked so well.

  The idea of putting all the livestock uphill, for example, seemed dumb at first. Food had to be trekked uphill to them, for one. Milking, birthing, feeding, cleaning—all of it required a trip up the hill, then back down. And what about health risks to the humans, below?

  But then he had seen how lush her crops were at the end of the last grow season. Now, in spring, he saw that the crops recently seeded downhill from the livestock began growing before anything else and were growing faster than the rest. The manure and urine, it turned out, turned to compost and nitrogen as they slowly seeped their way downhill. No fertilizer was needed, and yet the crops were already growing splendidly without having to plow, to weed, to add fertilizers, pesticides, liming, or other soil amendments… And the food that grew there tasted better than anything he had ever found at the neighborhood supermarket before the EMPs.

  Most of the weird things Cassy insisted on were like that, and just as interconnected with everything else. It really was a web of life, not a chain, and—

  The radio crackled, interrupting his daydreaming. He sat up suddenly and grabbed the radio.

  “Romeo One to Charlie Two, come in,” the radio said.

  Ethan recognized Michael’s voice, so skipped the passwords. “Romeo One, go ahead for Charlie Two.” Ethan adjusted the satellite map picture he had downloaded of the Op Area.

  As Michael gave his location, half a mile from the target coordinates, Ethan made notes on the map. “Change bearing two degrees north,” he told Michael. “You’re eight-zero-zero meters from target, with thirty-two mikes approximate. How copy?”

  Michael confirmed. Ten minutes later they repeated the process. After that, Ethan settled down to wait—there would be radio silence from here out, until the operation was finished one way or the other. It gave him plenty of time to think, which he welcomed. It was nice being out in the open air on this first really warm day of the year and enjoying the late-morning sunlight, rather than hiding in his cave. When had he started to think of the bunker as a cave? It had been his “safe place,” his retreat, for so long… his preferred habitat, even… but lately he had been finding excuses to have someone else man the radios. He was actually volunteering to help with planting and birthing and anything else that needed doing. It felt strange, but good.

  “Whatcha thinking,” came Amber’s voice from behind him.

  He turned toward her voice, and she looked stunning. Her hair was down and wrapped over her left shoulder to hang in front. She wore a black
tank top and deep-blue sarong, and a pair of sandals, the straps snaking up to her mid-calves. He couldn’t look away.

  “What?” he asked, blinking, and still didn’t hear her response.

  Amber laughed, eyes sparkling. For the third time she asked, “I said, what are you thinking about?” She twirled, her sarong flowing outward and up like a flower blooming. “You like it?”

  Ethan smiled and adjusted his shirt collar melodramatically. “Very much so. Hi. Surprised to see you up here.”

  “I just saw you go up here and it seemed unusual for you to be out of your bunker voluntarily, so I thought I’d come up and see what weirdness you’re up to.” She sat next to him in the grass and nudged him with her elbow.

  Ethan leaned back onto his elbows and looked up at the sky, eyes closed for a moment, then replied, “Well, you remember I told you about a weird message from the 20s, saying they were sending supplies to Taggart in New Jersey?”

  Amber’s features shifted from relaxed happiness to unease almost instantly. “Yeah…”

  “We decided that doesn’t make sense. I contacted Taggart through the back channel and he confirmed it—he hasn’t received any message about it. So, we’re curious as to what it is General Houle is sending and where it’s going. Just wanted to verify, so I ran the coordinates for the supply run’s route, and there’s a spot that’s natural for ambush.”

  “Yeah, but what if it’s legit, and it’s real supplies for Taggart?” Amber raised one eyebrow at Ethan.

  “Then we deliver it to him ourselves. Even if it’s not legit, we may end up doing that anyway, depending on what it is.”

  “I don’t know, Ethan. This sounds risky. The 20s are mysterious and all, but they’ve helped us, they’ve helped Taggart… Hell, they basically kept Taggart alive a few times, early in the war. Why shouldn’t you trust them?”

  “There’s been some really bad discrepancies. Like when they sent orders to Taggart in a way that seemed like it was from me. Luckily, I found out about it, but there were probably others I didn’t catch.”

  “So? We pretty much know they work for General Houle in Colorado. He’s the C-in-C, right?”

  “He says he is. Taggart disagrees and so do I. There are other little things, too, that lead me to think they might be…” He paused.

  “Go ahead, Ethan. You can tell me.”

  “I think they might be gaming both sides, Taggart and us against Ree. That doesn’t make sense under any honorable scenario I can think of.”

  “So you think they want to keep Ree and Taggart weak, and keep groups like ours distracted? But why?” Amber looked concerned, finally.

  “So he can take over everything. I think that’s his end-game. Keep the ’vaders here, but not too strong, so you have an enemy to point to as you roll out a dictatorship for everyone’s safety. It’s an old game. Everyone is so busy looking at our foreign enemy that they don’t see the domestic one until it’s too late.”

  “You’re kinda scaring me,” Amber said.

  Ethan closed his eyes and breathed deeply, feeling the breeze cascade through his hair. Looking away from Amber, he said, “I was recruited by the 20s without realizing who they were, shortly before the first EMPs. Someone—the 20s—had used my ego, before the war, to trick me into solving bits of programming problems that, when taken together with what some other hackers were working on, could be the source of some of the software used later to hack me. The same software I later used to hack… some government servers,” he said. He had promised himself never to speak about his central role in the American counter-EMPs that sent the whole world into darkness, in retaliation for the attack on America.

  “Meanwhile, if Houle is legit, then what you’re doing really is treason. What do you have, really? Some orders they didn’t send through you, and some code you wrote before the war? That’s hardly damning evidence of Houle’s treason, Ethan.”

  “No, it’s not. But I’m not letting Houle run a caravan of supplies through Confed territory without knowing what the supplies really are, or who they’re really going to. I see a connection running through all of this since even before the EMPs came. And if I’m right, then Houle knew they were coming and did nothing to stop the attack. Perhaps he even helped it to succeed, though we’ll never know for sure.”

  They sat in silence together for a while, neither feeling much like talking anymore, until the radio chirped. The signal wasn’t as strong as he would have liked, but it would do.

  After the usual radio preliminaries, Michael said, “I doubt this was going to Taggart. Will brief you on return. Have Sturm ready with her field surgery kit for a couple of wounded, when we arrive. Michael out.”

  Ethan said to Amber, “Hanging out up here was nice while it lasted. Will you go find Sturm while I pack up this stuff?”

  Amber nodded and said, “Alright. See you down there. And Ethan? Be careful with this stuff. Houle knows where we live.” She rose, bent to give him a brief kiss, and headed down the hill to find Sturm.

  Ethan watched her go, his dark and somber thoughts a contrast to the warm, sunny day, and then he headed toward the old driveway to meet the returning Clan raiders with their loot. He could have gone to the bunker for a couple hours first, but he didn’t feel like sitting in the dim light surrounded by walls and maps and often-grim reminders of the war.

  So he fiddled around topside, helping people with their laundry. It wasn’t quite the easy process nowadays that it had been before the war, though it had become much easier since Dean had engineered pedal-powered washing machines using an odd, u-shaped gear to get the oscillating action. It still took a lot of effort, though it was faster than using old-fashioned washboards.

  He was pretty well exhausted by the time his radio crackled again, Michael advising him he’d arrive in ten minutes. He made his way to the nearby driveway to wait, and found Lance Corporal Sturm and a couple helpers already waiting there. They exchanged nods, but she kept pacing back and forth, arms and legs tense and stiff, which Ethan took as a strong sign that she was wound tight and not in the mood to chat.

  A short while later, the sounds of hooves and wagon wheels could be heard crunching down the driveway. The lead horses came into view from around the bend, followed by wagons, and then more horses. Ethan saw that several wounded had been loaded into the wagons, and he stepped aside to let Sturm take care of them.

  The scene became chaos as Sturm quickly examined each of the wounded—there were four—and shouted directions to her helpers. Michael barked separate orders at the others milling around, and once they had off-loaded the wounded onto blankets, they quickly covered the wagons with tarps and camouflage netting. The surface chaos had obscured very purposeful orderly actions, Ethan realized.

  He watched as Michael made certain his wounded were being taken care of and the wagons were hidden as well as they could be for now.

  Then Michael made a beeline for Ethan. “It went well,” Michael said as he dusted road dirt off his clothes. He had a blood stain of his own on one arm, Ethan saw.

  “You hurt?” Ethan asked.

  “No, that’s from one of our wounded. Walk with me.”

  Ethan fell into step beside Michael, who walked toward Cassy’s house at a pace Ethan realized was slow enough to give them time to talk before she debriefed him. “So, what did you find?”

  “Well, there are indeed supplies in the wagons.”

  That was no surprise. Ethan replied, “Yeah. You said you didn’t think they were bound for Taggart?”

  Michael shook his head and pursed his lips, then said, “There’s a radio and a laptop.”

  “Taggart already has those things,” Ethan replied.

  “Yeah, from us, right? So that’s not the big deal. What is a problem, though, is that the laptop boots up in Korean, or Chinese. One of those Asian symbol alphabets.”

  Ethan’s jaw clenched. “You didn’t log in, did you?”

  Michael shook his head. “No way to. I don’t read Korea
n. I wish Choony were around.”

  “Good. If you had, I can almost guarantee the 20s would have known, and probably got the location. I can only hope the GPS they installed only activates with login, not simply by powering it on.”

  “I thought of that, too, but one of the troops opened it before I knew about it. I saw the login screen and closed the damn thing, then removed the battery.”

  “Good. Let’s hope that worked. I can open it safely in the bunker if I power off the router down there. What else was there?”

  “Two of the wagons we retrieved contain a kind of drone I haven’t seen before. They’re smaller than the drones we recovered from the wacko cult compound, but they look just about as capable and much more maneuverable. They also have something I’ve never seen before.”

  “What was it?”

  “The drones each have something that looks like a tiny gatling gun. Belted ammo fits into a bottom compartment. The ammunition is also new to me.”

  That got Ethan’s attention. If there were a type of ammo that Michael, a Major in the Marines and in Force Recon, had never seen… it must be something special.

  Michael continued, “The rounds look like they’re about half the size of a twenty-two. Like BBs, but actual bullets. I think they’re subsonic rounds, too, making them nearly silent at any real distance. The drone controllers have integrated screens, and a small red trigger built in, like those video game controllers of yours, down in the bunker.”

  “Wow. I think the dots are easy to connect, here, but why would the Mountain tell us where this supply convoy would be, and what path it would take?”

  Michael frowned. “I thought about that. If I were General Houle, I’d have sent two or even three convoys, and only told you about one. If that one goes missing, then the odds go way up that they’ve discovered you’re a traitor.”

  Ethan turned pale, and reached up to brush the hair from his eyes with a wobbly hand. “Michael, we can’t use these drones, man. The 20s, and therefore General Houle, know where Clanholme is. A couple of Predators armed with air-to-ground missiles could turn this whole place to rubble!”