Fear the Survivors

by Stephen Moss

  The Frenchman surprised Neal by becoming suddenly indignant, “Neal, my friend, I am afraid I must call something to your attention. Please forgive me but you repeatedly talk of your forces, may I remind you that the StratoJets you speak of were made using funds from us. Your taskforce, your Terrestrial Allied Space Command, as you call it, is, in truth, a NATO force. I think, perhaps, that we should start to refer to it as such.”

  Neal lifted his hands, he could do nothing right today, not that he had really hoped this would go much better than this. That said, though, this was a slip he could not afford to make in such delicate negotiations.

  “Forgive, me, my friends,” he said, placatingly, “I refer to them only as a unit leader might refer to his platoon, not in terms of ownership. Please, please. I know the taskforce would not be where it is without your brave support.”

  Neal suppressed a wave of anger at himself, but it was quickly supplanted by a deeper rage that was getting ever stronger in him. Anger at having to argue the merits of defending their planet from attack, at having to supplicate himself before people who seemed more worried with their territorial rights than they were with humanity’s very survival. He knew, deep down, that this was unfair, and that he had gotten greater support from these three important allies than he could reasonably have hoped for, but his patience with negotiation was fraying thin.

  At Neal’s plaintive apology, the French leader nodded and let out a breath, like he was releasing the tension in the room from his very lungs. He raised a hand as well, acknowledging that he had, perhaps, overstated the point, and the room returned to some measure of congeniality.

  “Dr. Danielson,” said the chancellor in a conciliatory tone, “no one here doubts the importance of your work …” she looked around, and the other two leaders nodded their agreement, the Frenchman emphasizing his with an almost apologetic look—almost—and the chancellor went on, “but as you have stated many times before, we cannot address the greater threat you have alerted us all to if we do not address the almost-as-severe threats from our neighbors here at home.”

  Neal nodded. He wanted to stop the woman, because, though he agreed with her in principle, he knew she was about ask for something he could not condone. But he let her finish, if only because he had already overstepped his bounds once in this meeting. To do so again might strain the already stressed bonds in the room to breaking point.

  “Your concern about Rolas is noted, Doctor,” continued the German leader, “but there have been no attacks there to date, and the naval fleet there, along with the ground-based defenses my own engineers have put in place there, represent a very real defensive perimeter.”

  Neal nodded once more, barely keeping his mood under control. As she took a breath, he went to interject, but she gave him no such respite, and went on, “If what you say about the Russian forces is true, then as I see it they will only become more capable with time, and that is all the more reason for us to engage them fully now, while we have the advantage. I, for one, will need to review these space-based munitions you are discussing before I could approve their usage anyway.”

  All three were very much in agreement on that point, and Neal took a deep breath. He looked from one to the next. She was talking of leaving the SpacePort and elevator exposed. It was a terrible risk. But he saw only determination in their eyes.

  “If we do this,” he said, “and of course it is the prerogative of you and your fellow TASC heads of state to do as you see fit, we would need to leave as much of a naval force behind at Rolas as possible.” Two of them went to respond, but he also went on quickly, “After all, when we talk of investment, we would not, I think you will agree, want to risk the trillions of euros already invested on the SpacePort, and the capabilities it affords us.”

  It was a sneaky comment, perhaps, but not one they could reasonably disagree with. They nodded, the German cautiously, the other two a little more agreeably.

  He took a breath. Underlying all of this talk of the ‘next level’ was another consideration. One he did not dare share with even his most trusted allies. Knowledge of the first main Resonance Dome, both in terms of its location, capabilities, and scheduled completion, were a topic he had made sure was necessarily muddy. They knew it was expensive, they each, in their way, thought they were its main benefactor, and each believed they would be the main beneficiary appropriately. But he had no intention of allowing the Dome, or the machines it would allow him to build, to come under any one country’s control. It wasn’t far off now. Once it was done, he would have the tools he needed to protect Rolas, the Research Group, and the Dome itself.

  He didn’t need much longer. If he could stall them for just a few weeks more.

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said into the silence, “you have cautioned that this remains isolated to a small part of Ukraine, a community that Russia claims invited it in. Let us say it stays that way for now. Let us say that we have a little time before this issue comes to a head. All I ask from you is that I have a little time to consolidate the defensive net around Rolas before we redeploy the StratoJets.”

  The room was silent, and it was the German chancellor that eventually acquiesced, “Of course, Doctor. No one is saying we should jump into this without preparation.”

  They all nodded, and the Frenchman added, “We will need time to consolidate our defense plans anyway, and we could not proceed with any military action without public support anyway, support we will only have if the Russians advance into areas actively resisting their incursion.”

  He spoke, Neal knew, of Belarus, and more importantly Poland. The only countries of the former Eastern Bloc with the stomach for and military capacity to put up any real resistance to the Russian military machine. Neal shuddered. He was gambling with massive chits here. Poland, in particular, was an important part of the European economy, and a not-insignificant supporter of Neal’s projects.

  Neal had already spoken to the Polish president, the man was understandably distraught, and it would not help his peace of mind if he knew his nation had become potential collateral damage in a negotiation of global scale.

  But, as it had been when Neal and Madeline had first gambled on their plan to destroy the satellites, this was quickly becoming a question not of avoiding casualties, but limiting them.

  The conversation wound on, but he knew he would not get out of redeploying his fleet. He smiled and engaged with them on greater and smaller issues, and inside he longed to know the status of the all-important Dome construction project, far, far away.

  - - -

  Hours later, Neal sat in the broad, beautifully appointed conference room, alone once more. He let the false smiles and platitudes wash from his face, and he closed his eyes.

  The conflict in Europe was coming to a head. The resolve of his allies was being tested, just as he knew Mikhail intended it to be. And it was not going well. He needed to act. He needed to take control of the situation. There were simply too many moving parts, too many obstacles, and his patience with diplomacy and negotiation was wearing, along with his temper.

  Bringing himself under control, he opened his line to Minnie.

  Neal: ‘minnie, contact barrett and get him on a plane to dc. we should probably talk to the president.’

  He breathed a long, deep breath, trying to suppress his anger at having to engage with the petty-minded acting US president again. He had desperately hoped to avoid it. Not because he regretted for one moment his decision to reduce his force capacity in the US. But because, deep down, he knew that nothing would probably come of it. He had abandoned America under duress, but he had done so for good reason. At this point they had even less capacity for the coming fight than the Europeans did.

  But he had to try and get them to return some of their forces they had called home from Rolas. They had left a section of their original battle group, and still remained among the greatest monetary contributors to his cause, even with their severely diminished GDP, but Admiral Burns had l
ong since taken the USS Reagan back to US waters, along with its powerful fleet of F35Cs and F/A-18Es, and Neal had to see if he could get some of them back.

  Having dispatched his request to Barrett, Neal stood and began to walk out of the room. As he went, he made one more request via his spinal nexus to Minnie.

  Neal: ‘… and minnie, get my plane ready. i’m leaving. i need to visit the dome.’

  Chapter 37: Borodino Bound

  Hektor moved slowly through the brush, flanked by the rest of his team. Cara was just ahead, Niels was bringing up the rear. They stayed tight.

  The night was no longer their friend, not now that they knew the full extent of their enemy’s capabilities. Now they moved at day, and their nights were whiled away in fiercely guarded pockets of perimeter defense, three asleep, three awake, rotating out regularly, their onboard AIs stimulating their pineal glands to secrete one-time, high doses of melatonin, enforcing a powerful, subliminal sleep. But those same AIs also listened, ready to flood their systems with adrenalin and dopamine at the slightest shout of warning from their friends guarding their slumber to bring them crashing back to consciousness.

  During the day they had resorted to hand signals of old, their shared training in the special forces units of Israel, Germany, the US and the UK giving them a common language. A language they would never forget, a language they responded to reflexively.

  It was a response pattern their AIs appreciated, in as much as they were capable of that level of cognizance. A purity of meaning that had a machine beauty to it.

  As Cara raised her hand, palm out, they all froze, the signal swimming out from her, to the man behind her, and on down the line. They maintained strict visuals on each other now. They did not all have to see every other team member, but each of them must be in view of at least one other at all times. Thus they operated as a whole, their movements flowing and ebbing, like a snake slithering through the undergrowth, seemingly fluid, seemingly disparate, but capable of attacking as one if threatened.

  They had started hesitantly. Frozen by the coursing visuals transmitted to them by Ayala, by the sight of their counterparts to the south being torn apart by black-winged predators. Predators they could, even then, see searching for them as well as they lay, silent but ready, fully alert and keenly aware of their mortality.

  But Ayala’s warning had come just in time. Hektor had responded immediately, sending a command to shut down all subspace comms. Their suits’ AIs had enforced the silence and thus they had vanished from the sight of the planes above, and once the Ubitsyas had passed overhead, they had all dug in. For they knew the Russians also had ground forces out there somewhere, also looking, sniffing for their subspace scent.

  Covered with mud and leaves, lying in caves and nooks of trees, their stillness imposed with machine stringency, they had all watched as the black clad Russian soldiers had eventually resolved out of the surrounding bush. Sweeping the area. Looking for a prey that had gone to ground.

  But without further signal, the Russians were no more able to spot Hektor and his team than Ayala’s forces had been able to find a lonely Lana in their far more fervent search months ago.

  The threat had passed. Hektor had eventually stood, passively scanning the area, the only team member able to break his forced stricture on movement. Then he had awoken them each in turn and they had moved off. Their silence as black as their armored bodies.

  Cara did not lower her hand, but nor did she do the quick, single fist pump that would mean a threat was present, so Hektor started to move up on her position, to see what she was seeing. He dearly missed the ability to speak to his team via subspace, and had tried to on several occasions without thinking, glad of his AIs ability to enforce his moratorium on any subspace signal despite his carelessness.

  “Cara, what can you see?” whispered Hektor, staying just behind her as he approached, remaining out of sight.

  She turned and waved him up to her position.

  “Road, sir. It’s the P58. By my reckoning we should be just south of Dyatkovo by now.”

  There was minimal traffic on the road, but enough that crossing it would be risky. Hektor reviewed his satellite view from above. Ayala had arranged to have a permanent data feed to Recon Team Two from the satellites in Low-Earth Orbit, focusing on their assumed positions. Hektor periodically used his shoulder-mounted tight-beam laser to ping skyward, letting Minnie and Ayala know where they were so they could adjust the view accordingly.

  “There is no easy crossing point I can see, Cara, we’re just going to have to make a run for it.”

  Bohdan approached their prone position, also hanging just back, but Hektor waved him up.

  “Hey, Bohdan,” Hektor whispered, “road crossing, P58. Got to make a run for it now or we’ll be waiting till dusk.”

  Bohdan nodded, also reviewing the data feed patching into his cerebral cortex.

  “Sergeant, I’ve been thinking,” said Cara pensively.

  Bohdan was about to make the obvious a joke when she flashed him a preemptive stern glance, before going on, “Twenty miles. We’ve covered twenty miles since we were ordered to Moscow. At this rate it is going to take us over a week to get there. And it’s only going to get worse once we get closer to the suburbs.”

  With over seven million people living in the Moscow metropolitan area, or the Moscow Oblast, as it was called, moving with stealth was going to become ever more difficult as they moved out of the lightly populated Desna forest-steppe and through the Kaluga suburbs to the metropolis itself.

  “Not sure I see another way,” said Hektor, but Bohdan was following Cara’s eyes as she glanced back at the road, and soon he was following her line of thought, as well.

  Bohdan began searching as she finished her statement.

  “I know it goes against standing orders, but we have to be able to move, and move freely. It’s one thing to stay in the shadows out here, but once we hit major population centers, those shadows are going to become few and far between …”

  She looked at the road once more. Hektor caught on, and a frown darkened his features to match the black of the retracted helmet surrounding his face.

  “You’re saying we should drive there?” It was more of a statement than a question, as he stared at the road and thought about the implications of commandeering a vehicle. They waited while he thought.

  “It’s dangerous, but no more so than leapfrogging every highway between here and Red Square,” he eventually said, quietly. “You’re right, of course. But we can’t just go out there and flag down a car. And we’ll need several cars, anyway … for the six of us and our equipment.”

  His mind was racing, computing the risk factors involved. He did not like it, but nor did he like having to move at such a molasses pace.

  “I have another option, sir,” said Bohdan, and Cara and Hektor both turned to him, “go to 53.5728 by 34.4512.”

  Their AIs were immediately responding, zooming on the coordinates he had listed. With subspace comms available to them, Bohdan would have been able to project the location directly into their minds’ eyes. Speaking coordinates seemed brutish by comparison, but they could not deny the machine efficiency with which their suits translated his words into a visual view of … “I believe it’s a lumber yard,” said Bohdan as their blank gazes took in the sight. “Not a big one, judging by the scale of the sawmill, but that’s not what I want to show you. There, that truck.”

  It was the center of the view he had taken them to. A small pickup truck with a covered flatbed. Hektor’s gaze focused again and he smiled tightly at Bohdan, then nodded. It was all the acknowledgment he would give, and all that Bohdan and Cara would need.

  It was a solid plan, Hektor thought as they all moved back to the rest of the team waiting behind them, and with a sense of calm at the way his team was coming together, Hektor shared the new plan quickly and they were off, moving carefully but with purpose.

  - - -

  Olesya walked from t
he house to the barn. She was sweaty with the morning’s work, first in the sawmill, in before dawn, finishing the mill from yesterday’s cut. They worked the mill till an hour after sunrise, the chugging diesel engine of the big saw also powering the paneled neon lights hanging overhead.

  Once there was enough light, her brother and her husband went out with the big lumber truck to cut. Their father was already out on the property, surveying, sapping, and testing trees, then marking them for either another year of growth or the saw. His ruined back and missing fingers on his left hand had long since precluded him from the hard labor of the mill that still bore his name.

  Once the men went out to cut, Olesya went inside to wake the children, feed them, and begin the thousand tasks of keeping the house.

  Hours later, the rumble of the huge lumber truck alerted her to their return, and soon she was walking out to the table and benches outside the mill and laying a large platter there of cured sausage, boiled potatoes and cabbage, mustard, and assorted homemade pickled vegetables. There were no forks, only knives, and as the three men emerged from the truck and the mill, they set to, their hunger profound, mumbling gruff appreciation as they grabbed, stabbed, and sliced at the hearty fuel in front of them.

  She joined them only briefly. She had eaten with the children before packaging them off for the long walk to school, and picked at the lunch as she had prepared it. They shared a joke or two, a comment on the health of various steppes and groves, both old and new. The patriarch of the family offered limited praise, but was nonetheless proud of his son for his hard work, and of his daughter, for finding a good, strong husband, one capable of contributing.

  They did not talk much, though. And twenty minutes later, Olesya’s father was rising from his seat, signaling the break was over, and without a word, the men went back to their main lumber truck, powering up its big diesel engine and driving off down one of the many dirt tracks leading away from the main house to chop and gather more wood.