Xanthe stood up, dusted her hands, and frowned. “This cabin is surprisingly clean, and this furniture looks in much too good condition to have been here for thirty years. I hope this isn’t some kind of meeting place, or hunting cabin, for squatters.”
Jesse and Noe looked at each other uncertainly. This woman had helped them, yes. But they still hadn’t talked to her enough to understand why she had brought them here. And now she was looking, and talking, and acting, much like every other commissar they’d ever seen . . .
“No, no,” Xanthe said hastily, stepping close to them. “I didn’t mean—that. I’m just concerned about you two being here alone.”
With a relieved smile, Jesse said, “But we’re not alone, ma’am. God has prepared the way for us, and He’s prepared this place for us. He’s always with us. We’re never alone.”
Xanthe blushed and averted her eyes. “Yes, of course,” she said uncomfortably. “I—I brought you some things. I’ll bring them in.”
The back of the Humvee was filled with boxes. Xanthe had brought dried and canned food, blankets, towels, socks, a clever little toolbox with fitted slots and grooves for all the tools, a set of acrylic dishes, and a pot and pan and kitchen utensils. One box even contained some commissar pants and blouses, without the insignia, of course.
As soon as she had brought everything in, she said awkwardly, “Well, good luck. I’ll be leaving you now.”
“But daughter, of course you need to tell us why you’ve helped us,” Jesse said gently. “Please.”
Xanthe was already halfway out the door. Without turning, she stopped. Her head dropped, and awkwardly she brushed her hand against her face. Jesse and Noe exchanged knowing glances; she was crying, and they knew exactly why. They’d seen it so many times before.
“We were assigned to go to the churches, you know,” she said in a trembling voice notably unlike her own assured tones. “I went, because it was my duty. And I listened . . . and I found that instead of hearing hate speeches and incitements to rebellion and militant fanaticism, I was hearing about the love of God. And then . . . and then . . . I started hearing God Himself.”
Jesse and Noe moved to stand on each side of her. Noe took Xanthe’s hand, which was shaking, and stroked it.
“God is dealing with you, my daughter,” Jesse said quietly. “You will be a handmaiden of the Lord. You will dream dreams, and you will see visions.”
Xanthe St. Dymion, the woman she had always been, changed at that moment. She felt the old couple’s hands on her shoulders and suddenly a strong hand was laid on her forehead. The prayer that she heard was like nothing she had ever heard before, and she felt strength flowing into her, and her shoulders shook as a storm of weeping took her. She had not cried since she was a very young girl and now she felt as if, indeed, something had broken inside. But, contrary to all human wisdom, it was not a bad feeling, it was a blessed relief, and the beginning of a cleansing. As she wept, she prayed out loud, her words awkward and stumbling, but with pure and simple faith she asked Jesus to save her soul, and come into her heart.
When Xanthe finished praying, and her tears had stopped, Noe retrieved her purse. She pulled out a brooch, a very old but beautiful brooch. It had a smooth mother-of-pearl stone in the center surrounded by delicate silver filigree. Two horses, cunningly wrought, reared and pawed the air on both sides of the stone. Again Noe took Xanthe’s hand, and placed the brooch in it. “I want you to have this, Xanthe. It was my mother’s and her mother’s before her. But I never had a daughter to give it to. I want you to have it.”
Xanthe closed her hand on the brooch and held it to her breast, merely nodding. “I—I don’t know—what I’m supposed to do now.”
Jesse Mitchell answered, “Don’t you fret, ever again, about your future, daughter. You are safe in the everlasting arms of the Lord, and He will carry you wherever He wills. Now, I don’t have anything to give you but my thanks, for your courage and for your obedience to the Lord. But I do have a word of light and a word of warning for you.
“The word of light is that when you give a child of God a drink of water, no matter what your reason, that blessing will be returned to you a thousandfold. Daughter, you have given us a great gift, and I know it was a dangerous thing for you to do, but God is going to bless you mightily for it.”
He hesitated, then continued in a somber tone, “And the word of warning. Take care of yourself and keep watch. For I see . . . I can see . . .”
Swallowing hard, her gray eyes troubled, Xanthe breathed, “What?”
Sighing, Jesse murmured, “A darkness. A great darkness is coming . . .”
Shortgrass Steppe Biome
Outside Lab #XJ2197
For some reason that he couldn’t quite fathom, Dr. Niklas Kesteven was outside. At night. Alone.
“Guess I’ll have another drink,” he said loudly. As he brought the silver flask to his lips, he considered the sound waves that emanated from his mouth, how far they would travel, how there was no possibility of them reaching another human’s ears, since he was out in the middle of the great empty western desert. “It’s like that old conundrum about the tree falling in the forest. Since no one’s ears are receiving my sound waves, therefore there must be no sound, therefore I must not be talking. There’s an existential concept for you.”
The esteemed and acknowledged genius, Dr. Niklas Kesteven, was sprawled spread-eagled on the hood of a Humvee outside the ranch house that squatted directly over SS Biome Lab XJ2197. The Humvee’s engine was still cooling, ticking loudly, and that was the only other sound in Niklas Kesteven’s world.
He was a little drunk, and he knew it, but he didn’t know why.Niklas Kesteven wasn’t a very introspective man, never had been. His main interest in life had always been assuring that whatever was inside him was comfortable and happy and satisfied and sometimes satiated. Why he needed the things he did wasn’t his problem. Only getting them was.
He stared up at the sky, the eons in visual. In the vast darkness of the desert, no “light pollution” dimmed the brilliant canopy. To really look at the night sky and the millions upon millions of stars and worlds and galaxies was truly breathtaking.
“I wonder why . . . ,” he muttered, not finishing the thought out loud. He tried to recall why he had forbidden Zoan to sleep “up top,”as they called the crust of the earth from the depths of the lab. He just couldn’t remember why he’d told Zoan he had to stay down in the lab.It seemed that he had a perfectly good reason at the time . . . but right now he couldn’t remember any reason at all.
“I miss Zoan.”
He deliberately spoke the words out loud, but it still came out in an ashamed whisper. He couldn’t even say it properly now, even though there was not a single soul to hear.
“And that brazen hussy Alia,” he muttered to himself, partly angry, partly amused. “Fancy her stealing my chacos and disappearing in the middle of the night! Wench!”
Niklas, in the honesty of this hypnotically beautiful night, admitted to himself that he wasn’t angry about Alia stealing his organism.“Wasn’t really Thiobacillus chaco, anyway. Was that useless ohm-bug.Now what did she want to do with that, anyway? An organism that could knock out electricity is useless, except for military applications.What’s she gonna do, conquer Fiji or Tambora or something? Not hardly, not My Commissar. Not the way she feels about the military and their lost dreams of conquest.
“Would seem to be that she feels the same way about you, Kesteven.She just melted into the night with your ohm-bug, without a good-bye and without a word since. That’s loyalty for you, huh?”
But it wasn’t exactly loyalty that Niklas was missing, or that he had thought he shared with Alia. It was something much more akin to love.
At least, he had thought that Alia had loved him.
“Wench,” he grumped again. He wasn’t going to think about that, not even on this revelatory night.
“At least she’s shrewd enough to align herself with some powerf
ul people,” he muttered. “The vice president of the United States, and the Lady of Light, now that’s some exalted circles, Alia girl. Power to you.”Niklas had been seeing Alia on Cyclops at least twice a day, either with Minden Lauer in Earth’s Light broadcasts, or working with the vice president’s security team. He lifted his flask high over his head in a salute to her. Squinting upward, he saw a spiky black form blotting out the stars.
It was a helicopter, as slender and ominous as a wasp. It made no sound.
“Apache,” Niklas said fuzzily. Raising his flask higher, he pledged a toast: “To my lost friend Zoan. To Alia, once My Commissar. And to silent black helicopters in the lonely night.”
TWELVE
CAPTAIN, WHY DO WE HAFTA invade a bunch of rocks?” Captain Con Slaughter, in his throaty half-whisper, intoned into his helmet comm, “We aren’t invading the rocks, Darmstedt. We’re covertly inserting ourselves in the midst of them, and then we’re covertly extracting them. One rock each. Guard them with your lives.”
Colonel Vashti Nicanor and Colonel Darkon Ben-ammi exchanged amused looks. In an affected Middle Eastern accent, Ben-ammi trilled, “Yes, yes, we are veddy mean, we are veddy bad, Colonel Nicanor.”
Deadpan, Vashti crashed her small fists down on Darkon’s giant shoulders and grunted, “Air Assault, sir!”
Ben-ammi, unable to resist the drill, growled, “Huu-ahh!”
First Lieutenant Ric Darmstedt grinned at the spectacle, and Vashti Nicanor, who had been transformed—albeit reluctantly— into an enthusiastic member of Fire Team Eclipse, returned one of her enigmatic half-smiles.
After observing Darmstedt coolly for six weeks, Vashti had seen that the big, goofy American was actually extremely intelligent, and was truly a good-natured man. He was the only male soldier she had observed who honestly tried to help the female paratroopers. There were very few women in the 101st; even though they were highly skilled technicians, and each member of the small division was required to get a helo rating, each trooper still had to be a jumper. That meant—aside from the stark fact that they had to jump out of moving airplanes—that they had to be able to load down with, and efficiently manage, more than 170 pounds of gear. Very few women, no matter how strong their desire and how determined they were, ever could accomplish a full combat drop. Vashti had found out that Ric Darmstedt helped them; he often designed personal regimens in strength training for the few women who survived basic training. Finally Vashti had sidled up to him and hinted around until he offered to “illustrate” some physical training techniques he used to help out the women.
Within a month, Vashti Nicanor, at thirty-two years old, was in better physical shape than she had ever been. Vashti knew that she’d never be on a fitness level with a twenty-year-old paratrooper, and she had no intention of trying combat parachute drops. But Darmstedt had taught her how to rappel. Vashti was amazed to find that not only was she good at it—she actually liked it. Ric Darmstedt had never taken advantage of the situation in any way; he always treated her with the utmost respect and courtesy.
Vashti had decided that she liked Ric Darmstedt very much. In fact, she and Darkon Ben-ammi both had formed close relationships with all of the members of the team. Somehow, in the weeks that they had been acting as “advisers,” Vashti and Darkon had become constant companions of this one team, had started participating in all of the team’s activities, had accompanied them on all their “missions,” and then, slowly, they had begun to participate in the missions, as members—if unofficial—of the Fire Team Eclipse.
And so now they were preparing to invade a bunch of rocks.
Captain Con Slaughter ordered, “Pair off. Check your gear.”
In the course of things, Vashti and Darkon had gotten in the habit of pairing off with other members of the team besides each other. Vashti immediately started a check with Ric Darmstedt, while Darkon and Sergeant David Mitchell started muttering together in low tones, with each appearing to “pat” the other down as they double-checked their equipment.
IAF Colonel Darkon Ben-ammi, two weeks previously, had stalked into the 101st Brigade Task Force commander’s office and demanded that he and Vashti be issued all the equipment that any paratrooper of the 101st Airborne had. His justification was that he and Vashti wanted to be able to give the Israeli army and air force the most accurate information possible on the exact functioning of the new, tightly constructed smaller fire team units. Strictly speaking, that didn’t exactly mean that he and Colonel Nicanor needed to have their own T-10 parachutes and M-20 rifles and night vision goggles and all the rest of the paratroopers’ cutting-edge gear. But the brigade commander, with an internal shrug, indulged his Israeli “adviser.”
So now Vashti and Darkon, along with their comrades in Fire Team Eclipse, checked for at least the tenth time their rappelling ropes, their NVG’s (night vision goggles), their M-20’s and ammo, their Beretta M9 personal defense pistols, their Genesis body armor, their Spectra-Lite PASGT helmets . . . and so on. Each of them was weighted down with approximately fifty pounds of equipment, and at that they were traveling light, for they were rappelling out for a simulated covert insertion-extraction mission, instead of a full combat parachute drop.
Slyly Vashti cut her dark eyes up to Darmstedt’s friendly blue ones and murmured, “Too bad we can’t advise you on how to do a covert insertion-extraction of a real person or persons, instead of rocks. I, too, am a little disappointed, Lieutenant Darmstedt.”
“Yeah, well, guess there’s no one needs extracting anymore,” he lamented. “Just like there’s no one needs killin’ anymore. Makes our job a real bore, huh?”
“Darmstedt, you want an exciting job?” Slaughter inquired. “How ‘bout packaging MRE’s, counting bullets, that kinda thing? Heard they need a clerk in Receiving.”
“Aw, that’s too kind of you, sir,” Darmstedt sighed. “But I just couldn’t bear to take a job away from some dedicated little drone-head. But, hey, Captain, I got a recommendation for making this job a little more interesting. Permission to speak?”
Con Slaughter’s sigh was audible over the helmet comm. The Apache was, indeed, so quiet when in silent running that they could hear each other’s whispers. “I’ll listen to your recommendation, Darmstedt, but I warn you that I intend to stay a captain for a while. I know you don’t care if you get busted down to bullet-counter, but I’m not going to pull any stunts that’ll get me in trouble.”
“No, no, what I’m thinking is, Cap’n, that we need to seize the initiative,” Darmstedt said enthusiastically. “That’s our prime directive, isn’t it? It’s in all the books, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” Slaughter muttered cautiously. “Seize the initiative.”
“Yes, sir. And I think that instead of trying to conquer a pile of rocks, we ought to try a for-real—well, not a real for-real, but a more for-real covert approach to something besides some rocks.”
“Uh-huh,” Slaughter repeated. “Approach to what?”
“People?”
“What people?”
“Like German people, maybe? Like maybe the 66th Luftwaffe Fighting Squadron?”
“What? At Holloman?”
“Well . . . yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I mean, come on, think about it, Captain. We’re halfway to Holloman anyway. We could just do a quick flyover, see if they notice us. I mean, that’s a better test of the stealth features than sneaking up on a pile of rocks. If they do catch us, we can just kinda wave and say Hi, and then chop on off into the night. If they don’t, well, we could just sorta . . . you know, test our covert insertion technique.”
“Not our covert extraction?” Slaughter asked with feigned surprise. “You don’t want to try and kidnap the commandant or anything?”
“Maybe his daughter?” Darmstedt suggested innocently.
“Yeah, I’ve heard enough,” Slaughter growled. “Darmstedt, sit down and shut up.”
“Huuu-ah, sir,” Darmstedt said cheerfully. He winked at Vashti, and the team sat down in
their small pull-down seats.
No one spoke for a long time.
With elaborate casualness, Slaughter asked the pilot, Deacon Fong, “Deac, what’s the incremental flying time to Alamogordo?”
Fong pushed a couple of buttons on his NavStar/LORAN keyboard, then pointed to the numerical display. “There you go, Captain. Additional 20 minutes, 12.2775 seconds from the original drop coordinates.”
“Check the weather,” Slaughter grunted.
Fong said with impressive professionalism, “No cloud cover, ground temp 66 degrees, temp at 10,000 feet, 42 degrees, light southerly wind, no chops.”
Another long silence ensued.
Slaughter said to the group in general, “This is a black-ops exercise, you know. No team-to-base communication.”
“Yes, sir,” Darmstedt sang out. “That means we wouldn’t even have to tell the brass we spied on our little German friends.”
“Darmstedt, I thought I told you to shut up.”
“Yes, sir, you sure did, sir.”
“Fong, head for Alamogordo.”
Someone snickered; Vashti was fairly certain that it was David Mitchell, but when she looked at him, his face was set in his usual angelic innocence.
Slaughter growled, “Darmstedt, if I have to tell you one more time to shut up I’m going to show you a new rappelling method I’ve been working on. You know, the one where you don’t use a rope?”
David Mitchell found something very interesting to look at on the helicopter’s low ceiling, while Ric Darmstedt looked tragically hurt. “Yes, sir, Captain Slaughter. I’ll try to keep it down.”
“Okay, people, let’s do the makeup job. Colonel Nicanor, Colonel Ben-ammi, I would advise you not to let Sergeant Valdosta assist you with the camo face makeup. He always gets it in your mouth. Sergeant Mitchell would probably be best.”
Vashti sniffed. “At last,” she declared, “I’ve found something that a woman can do better than you men. Give me that tin, Lieutenant Darmstedt. I’ll show you how to put camo makeup on so that your own mother couldn’t find you in your backyard.”
The Beginning of Sorrows Page 19
