On Distant Shores

by Mark Harritt

  Chapter Seventeen – A Place to call Home

  They were reluctant to move. Everybody was hoping that there was some way that they would be able to stay. Their situation was untenable, though. Mike used the recorded battles between his team and the dragons. He had Bobby pull up the files on the big screen TV in the play room so that he could run the last battle past the entire group.

  “Now look, right there, that large bastard. And that’s not the largest one out there, according to M.A. He said that there are bigger ones. If they were fighting each other, I wouldn’t have a problem, but you notice back on this recording,” He switched back to the recording from the first fight with the three dragons, “They cooperate, when something attacks them, or if they go into hunting mode. If we run into two or three of them like that big male that fell on me, we may not survive the encounter.”

  Smiles broke out at that memory. Mike continued, “Yeah, pretty funny, but it highlights one thing. It took three of us to take that damn big ass lizard out, and it put one of us, me, out of commission. God forbid, but what if there are more than three.”

  He had their attention now, “Truth is, we’re running out of ammunition. I only have thirty-five rounds of .50 caliber, and ten rounds of .338 Lapua left. As for the .308 or .556, that just tickles them. We need to find more iron for the rail guns. Now, that isn’t a problem, because we have plenty of rebar in this building. So, we can wreck the rebar out for the metal. And we can use some of your more esoteric building materials for wherever we end up at. We need a place where we can hunker down, and fortify. Maybe we can find a place that is naturally fortified.”

  He got arguments from the scientists and techs. They couldn’t find any weaknesses in his arguments, though. They finally conceded that he had a point, but it took a while to get to get there. They just couldn’t stay here. Now that they were convinced, he came up with a plan.

  They couldn’t just move. They had to have a place to go. He sent Rob out with Matki Awrani, Pang, Murph and Joseph for the scout team. Since Rob was a construction and structural engineer, he was the best fit for the mission. Rob drove his mech for team over watch. They went into the mountains to find a new home. Lenny created an app, with Weitz’s help, that translated between English and M.A.’s language. They were out scouting for two weeks before they came back.

  In that time, Mike suited up three times to kill dragons. Luckily, they came in as singles. Then they fought and killed ten grasnigs that smelled food and came hunting. There were as many as three in a pack, and they never came with less than two of the beasts hunting. The large predators kept coming. Soon, even the people that were griping about moving started to realize that their position was untenable. Trips up and down the ladder to defecate and urinate enforced this realization.

  The people left behind started pulling supplies together. They stripped everything, leaving only the electrical system for the fourth floor. They repositioned the computer servers and quantum battery to the fourth floor. They stripped everything from the other floors, hoping that they would have enough out of the detritus to wire the new location. Powered pulley elevators were created to get everything to the top. They started with the necessary things, then moved down to the like to have things, and then to the ‘I don’t know what we’ll use it for, but it might be good to have.’

  Finally, the recon team was back. Pang was in the front, rifle at the ready, looking like the littlest bad ass warrior. Not a stretch in the imagination there. To either side of her were the large bulks of Joseph and Murph. Rob brought up the rear, in the mech. M.A. sat on the top of the mech, eating some kind of plant as he rode it like the howdah on an elephant.

  Mike clicked on his ear bud, “Hey Rob, what’s up, how’s things going?”

  Rob replied, “I would be doing much better if I didn’t have to watch M.A.’s ass on my heads up display.”

  “Just ask him to get off.”

  “Not going to happen. He likes the height, being able to look around. Plus, he’s actually been able to spot a few nasty creatures ready to pounce. So, his ass aside, he does good riding up there.”

  “Talk to your AI, maybe it can switch off that particular camera.”

  “Hey, great idea, hang on.”

  Mike waved at Pang and she waved back. He got a wave from Joseph and Murph. Then he saw a wide grin on M.A.’s face as he saw Mike. M.A. waved. Mike wondered how the hell M.A. was able to ride on the mech armor without falling off.

  “Hey, is it a good idea to have him ride up there?”

  “He’s a monkey. He can scramble up the mech armor while it’s walking. We talk to him about it, but he keeps climbing back up.”

  Mike chuckled as Rob continued, “Hey, the AI was able to turn off that camera. Thanks Mike.”

  Mickey clicked on, “Rob, admit it, you just like looking at M.A.’s ass.”

  “Screw you, big man.”

  “Get a ladder, short guy, you’re going to need one.”

  Tom jumped in, “What did I just hear? Mickey wants Rob to screw him?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “That’s what I heard you say. You told him to get a ladder so that he could screw you. That sounds like an invitation to me.”

  “How would you know, you haven’t had to chase ass in a long time.”

  Everybody got quiet. Mickey spoke, “Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . I mean, I didn’t . . . “

  Tom waved it off, “Don’t worry, Mickey. I know, you didn’t mean to bring up Barbara and the family. No prob. I know that she and the kids are in a better place. If there truly is a heaven, that woman is definitely there. She put up with my garbage long enough to earn the right.”

  Mike spoke to break the mood, “Alright guys, let’s get back to work.”

  Pang walked up. Mike held out his fist and she did the bump.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  She nodded, “It went well. We found a place that’s defensible. Rob thinks the surrounding area is pretty stable. He said the area is granite which is a good, hard rock to work with. He tried the pulse laser on it, and got a good straight cut on it. He thinks he can build what we need. Best of all, it has a pool of water that seems to be spring fed.”

  Murph and Joseph said hello, and went into the cave, high fiving and fist bumping the crowd as they walked through. Mike returned their greeting and then turned back to talk to Jennifer. As they chatted about what she had seen, Rob walked up and parked his mech. M.A. shifted his body as the mech armor squatted down into its parked position. M.A. wasn’t even concerned, walking over the moving mech armor as it settled, hands free until he started climbing down.

  When he got on the ground, he walked over to Mike with his hand out. Jennifer looked at M.A., “Bro hug coming, Murph taught him.” Mike caught the hand and then did a partial hug with the other arm, patting him on the back. M.A. walked into the cave, looking for chocolate. The door popped open, and Rob climbed down.

  “Well?” Mike asked.

  Rob nodded, “We found a place, a narrow cliff opening, widens behind, with enough area to cut into the face of the granite. Even better, though, I found a place that has some limestone so that we can make mortar. Oh, and water, we have lots of water. It runs out of the cliff opening in a small stream.”

  Mike said, “Well, building is your expertise, so we go with your suggestion. With the spring there, it sounds like the perfect place to me.”

  They talked some more, had some coffee, and then all three went down to talk to the brain trust.

  --------------------------------------

  It had been a long three months. During the building of the new facility, everybody else had been working to get all of the materials moved up for transportation. Then they built wooden wagons to transport everything out to the new site. As Rob drove his team to get everything built, Mike drove everybody to get everything moved. Teams to
ok turns getting the wagons loaded and transported to the new location. Rob even figured out how to add plumbing and flush toilets to what everybody was calling the castle.

  The team was in high gear, clearing out the cave. They piled everything on top of the wagon. They were the last ones out. Mike, Everett, and Tom had been fighting the incursions by predators while Rob and Mickey escorted the gear and people to the new location. Now, with everything transported, Mike and the team had filled the throat of the tunnel with dirt, and then piled rock six feet in front of that. Mike was hoping that this would keep predators out, until they could figure out a way to mine all of the rebar out of the facility.

  “Well, that’s that,” Everett pronounced.

  Mike nodded, grabbing his water bladder, and taking a long, cool drink. There was no more coffee. All of the MREs and licky-chewies were gone as well. Now, the entire group relied completely on what they found in this wilderness to sustain them. People were losing weight.

  Jamison died, a month after they started moving. He had a malignant brain tumor, and it finally took his life. Humphreys and Nosstrand thought this might explain the questionable things he had done before the incident. Looking through the emails, they could see the shift in his personality, as he became more and more paranoid. His personal relationships with family had gone completely downhill about two months before Mike and the team arrived.

  The null generator was exactly that. The big minds back at DARPA made a big discovery about gravity. This was going to lead the planet into a new age of space travel. The null generator was just part of the new technology that was being developed. Problem was, it hadn’t been set up correctly. Diagnostics weren’t done, and the internal cesium clock hadn’t been set. If Weitz had been able to set it up, they wouldn’t be one billion years in the future right now.

  Waves were an interesting subset of physics. In fact, all energy and matter was waveforms. Once you understood the wave characteristics of the four fundamental forces, you could develop wave forms that would interact and cancel them. This created a null interaction with the reality around the field generated. When the cesium clock stopped working, this field stopped being generated. If it hadn’t stopped working, God alone knew where they would be. This information had devastated the small community. Now, they knew there was no going back. This was their life now. They were stranded on this island of time.

  There were only three of them. Tom was already in the mech.

  Mike pointed his chin towards the mechs, “Time to saddle up.”

  Airman Babcock and Jamison were the only ones left. Everett was urinating on Jamison’s grave. He zipped up and walked to his mech.

  They climbed up and into the mechs. Mike looked back at the cave, one more time. He looked at his past, then put his helmet on. There was nothing more he could do. There were no monsters he could fight, no reality he could change, nothing he could do, to change the fate that he had been dealt. “I’m sorry Jo, I broke my promise.” The interface was blurry as he wept for his lost love, his heart breaking. He was trapped, no way home. The mech armor stood, and Mike strode towards his new future.

  --------------------------------------