The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time

by Raymond Dean White

  “So would I,” she said. “But is that worth risking all our lives? Besides, they are alone. There’s nothing we can do for them. It’s not like we can help them if they need it.”

  He shook his head and said, “But it takes more than missiles. They’d need a properly trained launch crew, someone who can do ballistic calculations...”

  She cut him off. “Have you seen how he’s rebuilding roads, hydroelectric power stations and waste water plants? He has cities lit up all over his realm.

  “Hell, if it wasn’t for his cannibalistic orgies and using slave labor, I’d say he was doing good work. My point being, if he can do those things he has people who can launch at us.”

  Commander Kent took a moment to think, then said, “I think Leila was right when she said they already know about us. Anyone with a telescope can see us moving from the moon to the ISS and back.”

  “And as I’ve said before, I agree with you. But knowing we’re up here and actually talking to us...” She shrugged. “Two different things. I think it’s best we keep our distance for now.”

  *

  The Freeholds Observatory on Farnum Peak

  A cool breeze rustled aspen leaves and pine tree branches. Overhead, the Milky Way glowed like white stripe across a jeweled sky. One of the jewels was moving.

  Raoul Garcia pressed the plunger on the camera repeatedly as the eight-inch Celestron telescope tracked the ISS across the sky. He’d seen something rendezvous with the ISS on several occasions now, stay for a few days, then leave.

  “Is it them?” Elizabeth Town and Leona Perry asked in unison. They were bundled up against the evening chill. Liz in a neon green North Face ski parka and Leona in a dark brown, hooded, wool overcoat. Their faces glowed in the starlight and their eyes gleamed in anticipation.

  Raoul had reminded them about the Genesis project, but he’d held out little hope the astronauts had survived.

  “It’s definitely the ISS, but it’s orbiting slower than I remembered.” He snapped his fingers. “Of course! They had to move to a higher orbital track to escape debris from The Impact.”

  “So, it is them,” Leona repeated.

  “Well, I seriously doubt it’s little green men; though how they managed to survive up there all these years is beyond me.”

  “We shipped them up tons of supplies,” Liz said. “I remember watching launches on TV and wishing I could stow away and join them.”

  “Yes, well, supplies are one thing but living this long in zero gee – no one thought it was possible.”

  “Then either everyone was wrong, or they aren’t living in zero gee,” Leona said.

  They all looked at each other, eyes wide and exclaimed, “The moon!”

  On the way back down the mountain Raoul decided he needed to somehow set up communications with the astronauts. They could be the key to saving the world when Havoc’s Twin returned.

  Chapter 31: The Fiddler Plays No More

  Ellen Whitebear strode along the path that led from the new Radio Shack to her home. Her eyes were still red and puffy from the tears she’d just shed, but her smile lit up the whole valley.

  Michael was alive!

  She’d heard the sound of his voice. Thank God!

  Ever since Steven saw that terrible vision more than a week ago, she’d feared he was dead. That monstrous man, choking the life... She shuddered. Then her joy dispelled the horror.

  He was safe! Her man was alive and safe!

  She had to tell Steven. Though she felt he already knew. Her son had approached her the day after the vision. He told her Minowayuh had come to him in a dream, showing him a different vision, this one of a huge white bear standing atop a fallen giant. Steven said it clearly meant “Dad” had survived. Ellen envied him the strength of his conviction. She, herself, had been up crying all night.

  When he’d seemed a bit subdued, Ellen had asked him what else he’d seen. Her big, strong, almost-a-man, son had cried when he told her he thought Minowayuh was dead.

  Ellen had wanted desperately to believe that Michael was alive but Steven’s vision had haunted her, denying her peace of mind, tormenting her.

  “I always felt I’d know it, if he died,” Ellen muttered to herself, “But I never thought my son would see it happening. God, that was awful.”

  She shook her head and skipped a couple of steps, happier than a schoolgirl bringing home a report card full of A’s. Her man was alive!

  The only thing that took a slight edge off her happiness was Michael’s warning that there was definitely a spy in the Freeholds. Well, she’d been expecting that since the War Council. She had already drawn up a list of people who stayed on after the Council. She decided she’d have to add the names of every newcomer for the past two years. Those names would be a good place to start the investigation, but she realized she couldn’t automatically exclude Freeholders who’d been around for years. Not everyone was happy with the way she ran things, though her political opponents had kept a low profile since her popularity rocketed after the raid on the Freeholds.

  Her smile slipped slightly as she considered another urgent priority. Since Michael had told her the King knew the Garcias were in the Freeholds, she had to send someone to warn Jim Cantrell and Sara. Ellen decided she would go herself, after she told Raoul.

  *

  “How much Goddamned longer do I have to wait?” Prince John screamed into the microphone. “Those bastards are killing me with their pissant ultralights while my air force is being assembled by a bunch of butterfingered numb-nuts!”

  “Try asking your brother!” Jamal Rashid snapped back. He normally wasn’t so brave, but dammit, the delay wasn’t his fault. Anthony’s men unloaded the crates containing the aircraft and stored them in secret locations all over the damned town. Then Anthony and seven of his key people had disappeared. And they were the only ones who knew where all the crates were located. Just finding those crates had taken Jamal almost two weeks. And now John was jumping down his neck because the planes weren’t in the air. It just wasn’t fair!

  On the other end of the connection, in Payson, John was taken aback by Jamal’s tone. It was a rare thing when the skinny little bastard stood up for himself. And while John would usually kill anyone who was so insubordinate, Jamal was one of his father’s favorites. John reminded himself the man could also be dangerous. He took a deep breath, biting off the angry curses he almost showered on Jamal, deciding to placate the man for now.

  “It’s okay, Jamal,” he said, for once forbearing the use of the nickname the man obviously hated. “I didn’t mean to blame you. But build a fire under some asses down there in Nephi. I need those planes.”

  “Yes, Sire,” Jamal replied stiffly.

  As John replaced the microphone, he wondered where the hell his brother was.

  *

  Ken Bilardi was in serious trouble. He lay unmoving at the bottom of a ravine where the rockslide had carried him. He could turn his head, but try as he might couldn’t move his arms or legs and he didn’t know if they were just pinned under the rocks or if his back... There was no real pain and it would hurt if his back was broken, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?

  His mind veered away from that line of thought. He strained with all his might and will, but couldn’t move or feel anything. Not a finger. Not a toe. How was he going to get out of this? How was he going to deliver his information to Provo?

  His eyes followed the line of shadow down the shale and limestone wall as the sun rose higher in the sky. Soon it would be on his face, drying him out, warming the rocks, increasing the terrible thirst building within. Water!

  His imagination, always too active, took over. Visions of dried, cracked, raisin-burned skin and seeping sun-scalds filled his mind. Already his tongue was beginning to swell. This is not how he would have chosen to die. He hoped Jacques would take good care of his fiddle.

  Two days later he opened his mouth to life-giving rain. Blessed water, that soothed his thirst, cooled his crisped
skin and the scorching rocks that made the bottom of the ravine an oven out of hell. Cruel water, that dazzled him with hope, then betrayed that hope as runoff trickled and swelled and lapped at his chin. Damned water, that replaced the torment of dying of thirst with the fear of drowning.

  He thought he was hallucinating when first one man, then others, slid down into the ravine and began digging him out. Tears filled his eyes and he swallowed convulsively. He tried to think of something he could say to convey his gratitude. Then the hallucination became a nightmare when his eyes finally focused on their brown uniforms.

  Chapter 32: Weather Delays

  Nephi, Utah/Deseret

  July 29, 13 A.I.

  Prince John was seated at his desk scowling furiously at the Situation map; but it wasn’t the disposition of his troops that was angering him at the moment. The sound of the rain drumming against the roof of his office was the most irritating noise he could imagine.

  Almost a month had passed since his brother Prince Anthony ignored his advice and left on what the idiot had called a reconnaissance in force; more than two weeks since he’d sent word of his whereabouts. John shook his head in disgust. Tony just couldn’t wait to test out his toy planes.

  “But John,” he’d said. “They’ll make such great scouts. They’ll be able to spy out ambushes. They’ll turn the tables on those damned guerillas.” Yeah. Right.

  John tried explaining the guerilla raids were little more than a nuisance he could end any time he wanted to. All he had to do was attack Provo, now the seat of the Mormon religion and the Allied commander would be forced to pull his troops back and defend the place. But his ever-impatient brother listened as well as always.

  Search parties had been dispatched. Many failed to return and none had any success locating his brother or the men with him. Furthermore, Anthony’s absence had delayed the deployment of the King’s Air Force. That, as far as John was concerned, was inexcusable. When he shows up...

  He was beginning to fear the worst. Well, not the worst. After all, with Anthony dead, John became heir apparent. No, the worst would be facing his father’s wrath for having allowed Tony to get himself killed. This could be worse than the royal ass-chewing he got for blowing the Freeholds raid. His father still hadn’t forgiven him for losing those Cobras. The only two helicopter gunships in the entire damned kingdom, as he was forever being reminded.

  And now with most of his planes assembled, his roads built and guarded and his armor and men ready, he had to put up with this goddamned rain. Jesus! To make matters worse, he’d discovered only this morning that a case containing vital parts for three of his aircraft had been left on the docks in California. He had been so angry he’d personally beheaded the clerk responsible for the omission. The parts would arrive with the next shipment, but that meant they still might not be here before the weather cleared enough to attack.

  Goddamned rain! If it stopped right now, it would take days before the ground was dry enough to begin the armored attack. Even the road from Nephi to Payson, which his road crews had repaired and rebuilt to facilitate his troops’ advance, had been closed for days due to mudslides. Every little delay cost him what he was increasingly coming to regard as precious time. Yet more time for those bastards in Provo to prepare.

  John had argued bitterly with his father earlier in the year, pleading with the King to reconsider, stating repeatedly the time to attack was right then, before their victims could get organized.

  His father had vetoed that idea, both to reprimand John for his failure at the Freeholds and because this time he wanted to have all of his enemies in one place so he could smash them and be done with it. John knew his father was still smarting over the five years of constant campaigning it took to extend the realm over the widely scattered resistance groups in Washington.

  John banged his enormous fist onto the table in frustration. Why couldn’t his father see the situations were totally different? In Washington, the population centers, though small, were numerous and well organized, having been engaged in trade and mutual defense for years. When John recommended an instantaneous attack, he had done so in order to prevent them from getting even better organized and with the full knowledge that a final conquest could take years. The King had approved the plan, then berated John for his failure to deliver an instant victory.

  Here in Utah and Colorado, the population centers had been--and he couldn’t help stressing the past tense--relatively poorly organized and completely out of touch with each other. Conditions had been absolutely perfect for a blitzkrieg-like attack. Now, even though the enemy was still numerically and technologically inferior to his forces, they’d been given almost a year to prepare. Look at that air force they’d come up with. He wondered what other surprises they had in store for him.

  John was beginning to worry that the cost of bringing Utah and Colorado into the Empire was going to be too steep. Hell! Their incessant guerilla raids had badly damaged his soldiers’ morale, not to mention the dent it put in his supply of reserves.

  Worse, it looked like his father was losing confidence in his abilities. Why else would the old man have nixed his plan to ship a second expeditionary force through the Gulf of Mexico, land it on the beaches of central Kansas and attack these damn Mormons and Freeholders from the rear? Nothing was going according to plan in this campaign, at least not his plan. That was the main reason he was sending Jamal Rashid back to California. Perhaps Jammie could convince his father to reconsider that second army.

  He turned his attention to the stack of intelligence reports on the table. The first one nearly sent him through the roof. The spy they had found injured in a ravine, what was his name? John leafed through the pages till he found it, Bilardi, Kenneth Bilardi, had managed to chew his own tongue off and had bled to death before being properly questioned. John made a note to have the soldiers in charge of the spy executed as a lesson to others. Such sloppiness could not be condoned.

  Of another suspected spy, the pretty sax player he remembered, there was no sign, though one of his recon patrols was found murdered along her trail. God! Will nothing ever go right again? He’d been looking forward to questioning her personally, using her as his next toy. His last one had died on him before he came, cheating him. In the meantime, it might pay to keep a closer eye on her associates. The Lachelle woman offered intriguing possibilities.

  Half an hour later, he came to a report that put a smile on his face. The spy in The Freeholds had managed to get attached to the flanking army the Allies intended to surprise him with. Good! The spy now added a note that Sara Garcia was with the medical corps of the flanking army. Excellent! The flies were becoming ever more entangled in his web. His smile widened when he considered that whatever surprises the enemy had cooked up for his troops, he had a few of his own waiting.

  He opened the next report, read briefly and his smile vanished. His man in Provo had been unable to delay any further the restoration of satellite communications between there and the Freeholds. The Prince’s brow knitted with concern. Could this be related to Raoul Garcia? He hoped not, for if that old man had decided to work on activating The Weapon, then the Empire was doomed. The man from Provo had added a consolatory note to the end of his report. His brother, Prince Anthony, was allegedly dead, killed by a man named Michael Whitebear, who was now leading the Allied air force.

  “GODDAMMIT!” John roared, slamming his hands onto the desk so hard it broke.

  It wasn’t so much that Tony was dead. Hell, he’d already suspected that. But the man who killed his twin was the same man who, according to the Freeholds’ spy, snatched those kids from under his nose and who reportedly had a goddamn-broken-fucking-leg at the time. Maddening! Worse! It was humiliating to be defeated by both the man and his bitch of a wife.

  John leaped to his feet and stalked back and forth across the room like a lion pacing his cage, smacking one enormous fist into the palm of the other hand repeatedly as he decided exactly how to deal with those
goddamned annoying Whitebears. It wasn’t until he envisioned them both as his toys that he regained his sense of perspective and controlled his raging temper.

  Sitting back down at his desk, Prince John pushed the papers away from him and leaned back in his chair to consider the implications of all he’d just learned. So far, it all tended to reinforce his decision to attack with everything he had at the first opportunity, even if his air force wasn’t at full strength. He had a feeling things were somehow slipping out of his control and the Prince was one man whose passionate obsession was to be in control.

  He glanced out the window of his office at the rain coming down outside and made a mental note to have Jammie deliver the news of Tony’s death to his father. The scowl was back on his face.

  *

  Michael looked out of the hangar into the steadily falling drizzle and smiled like a searchlight. The rain had accomplished what the defenders of Provo could not, stalling the King’s march on the city. For six days now the rain had fallen, turning firm earth into treacherous mud, bogging down the King’s armor. It had also bought the Allies precious time for those last minute preparations. And even though a few pit traps had collapsed and a couple of trenches had caved in, everyone in Provo was praying for the rain to continue. The longer it rained, the longer many of them would live.

  *

  Both Able Emery and Martin Dinelli hated the rain. Both felt it merely delayed the inevitable, though they had somewhat different concepts concerning exactly what was inevitable. Able couldn’t wait for the attack. He wanted to see action. He had lied to Michael about not caring what type of craft he flew in. He wanted one of the crop dusters. He smiled as he considered the fact that none of the pilots he’d trained as mechanics would spot his subtle sabotage until it was too late.