When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  “He’ll be alright with a little rest,” Ford replied. “It's not as bad as it looks.”

  “Good, good,” Nate sighed. “Were you able to figure out what happened?”

  “Something blew up in his face I guess,” Ford said. “I really couldn't tell you much other than that. The eye will be okay. There was just some glass in it. Eyes heal surprisingly fast. He'll be able to use it again in a couple of days I think.”

  “That's good news. Can I see the helmet?”

  “Uh, sure,” Ford said. “It’s basically intact. It needs to be cleaned out and have a new visor put in. You wouldn’t know how to fix a radio like this would you? Kinda looks like it came apart too. I've got a couple spare visors and some cleaning supplies, but I’m not much good at fixing electronics. I've got fat fingers and they just keep making these things smaller. I can never get it all to connect right.”

  “I can take a crack at it,” Nate replied.

  Ford handed Nate the helmet. Nate dropped it down on one of the unoccupied beds while Ford produced a tool box from the footlocker by his bed. Nate sorted through the tools in seconds finding exactly what he needed faster than Ford would have and he was the one that organized the tools. He picked out a couple of screwdrivers and pair of needlenose pliers. In a few minutes Nate was pulling the helmet apart and spreading the parts all over the bed. Ford was mesmerized. Nate's fingers danced from tool to tool without once grabbing the wrong size. Ford tried his hardest not to blink so he could catch every detail as Nate realigned all the wires and reattached them in the correct sequence. He was putting the thing back together by the time Ford had to blink for the first time. He had never seen anyone fix one of those things that fast, not even the people that worked on them all the time.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ford asked incredulously, “You've done this before, like a million times right?”

  “No,” Nate replied. “I've never worked on one of these before, but it wasn’t damaged that badly. Some of the wires were just out of place and the speaker just had to be reattached. Then it was just a matter of tightening some screws. Now we just need to clean it out and put that new visor in.”

  “Right, but that only took you what like five minutes? And you've never worked on one of these before?”

  “No, but, well it's not that different from the ones in the Crusaders that I used to work on. It's just smaller.”

  “Remind me to keep you around. You’re pretty handy.”

  “Thanks,” Nate replied. He looked like he was about to start blushing.

  “Here go ahead and clean that out with these,” Ford said handing him some of the alcohol wipes. “I'll get a visor that's the right size out of the spare parts box over there.”

  Ford rifled through another box kept in one of the footlockers. It mostly contained patches for the mesh of their armor and a couple of spare armor plates. It was mostly knee, elbow, and shoulder pads, parts that didn't need to be perfectly shaped to do their job. There were three extra visors. One for each of the sizes they came in. Lumar's helmet was a medium so Ford took that one. Nate was done cleaning out the inside by the time he was ready to put the new visor in. The old one popped out after pressing on the buttons on the hinge it slid along. Once the new one was attached the thing looked almost as good as new.

  “Not too shabby,” Ford said. He turned the helmet over in his hands a few times to inspect it. Other than a few scratches it looked fresh off the assembly line. “Thanks for your help Nate.”

  “Thank you taking care of Lumar.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Let me know if anything changes okay?”

  “Of course.”

  Nate nodded and climbed down the ladder. It was going to be nice to have someone like him around. Ford had been curious as to why Nate of all people had been flagged essential. As far as he could remember there were only a couple of the project leads and managers from Logan rescued besides him. But after seeing him pull that radio apart and fix it up that fast he thought he had an idea as to why they would want him kept safe. He was obviously some kind of mechanical genius.

  Maybe he'd finally have some decent help for once. Any time he asked Wallace for help with something he'd usually try to rush it or find a lazy way to do it that usually ended up breaking whatever they were working. Jesse was always trying too hard like she had something to prove. She was usually the first to offer to get her hands dirty, but once she did she was always trying to act like she knew what she was doing instead of just listening to what he wanted her to do. With either one of them it almost always took twice as long to get a job done than it should have. Radcliff was of course just too big. His hands and body got in the way too much to be much help with anything. About all he was good for most of the time was handing him tools.

  The more he thought about it the more he liked it. Nate could probably even teach him a few things. The only thing that bothered him about the whole thing was someone like Nate had no business being in a squad like this. Frankly, if Derricks had any sense he would have kept him on staff at Guardridge working on his war machines. It just didn't make sense. Going out on missions with Radcliff was about as dangerous as it gets. Looking at Lumar proved that. It would be a tremendous waste for Nate’s brilliance to be lost on some insignificant battlefield.

  Ford made another sweep of his patients. He checked to make sure they were strapped in snugly enough to stay in place without further aggravating their wounds. He double checked Lumar's bandages to make sure they hadn't bled through too much. The little robot was finishing up the stitches on the John Doe. Ford watched as thick black thread went through skin. The little robot tied one last knot and then retracted its arms. Ford packed it back into the case and powered it down. That was the extent of what he could do for the two of them. He put everything back into the footlockers and made sure it was all secure.

  “Ford, get down here,” Radcliff ordered, yelling up through the opening, “We’re going to make one more circle around the city with the scanners and then we’re leaving.”

  “Right away sir,” he replied.

  Radcliff parked while Ford climbed down the ladder. Radcliff had already relinquished the driver seat by the time he reached the cab. Ford took his seat behind the wheel and spent a good five minutes trying to get the seat and mirrors back where he wanted them. Radcliff sat shotgun beside him seemingly oblivious to the irritation on Ford's face from having to change all the settings back.

  Since everyone else was already buckled in or strapped in, Ford started making his final lap around the city. He drove silently for about five minutes just making it back to the outer wall.

  “You know I already found the trail,” Ford said. “We should get after them before they go to ground.”

  “I know. I just want give it one last look.”

  “The sensors only picked up the one thing...do you sense something else?”

  “No, maybe. I don't know. Just strange whispers.”

  “Whispers?”

  “It's probably just all the death around here. I can feel it sometimes.”

  Ford didn't know what to say after that. Radcliff had a tendency to say strange things. Ford usually only had a vague idea of what he was talking about half the time. He knew Radcliff just wanted someone to listen, so he listened and didn't try too hard to make sense of the cryptic things he said.

  Once they were outside the wall Ford took his lap of the town counterclockwise. He took them out near the north end where he saw the most Sarsaul tracks. He'd take them around and come back there at the end so they could just move on after this last sweep.

  Ford glanced over at Radcliff again after coming about a quarter of the way around the town without a single ping. Radcliff was staring out the window. Ford could feel how upset Radcliff was, though he couldn't say how or why. He was never sure if it was just empathy from serving together so long or if it was something else, but he often found himself being dragged into Radcliff's moods. Radcliff was a
lways deeply emotional when it came to the death of comrades. Ford hated seeing stuff like Sangent, but it never got to him like it did to Radcliff. They'd both seen so much death together. Ford had gotten used to, at least as used to it as a person could get. It was just reality, but for some reason Radcliff always took the losses personal. He blamed himself. He always did.

  He had to swerve to keep from hitting a chunk of stone that had fallen off of the wall in front of him. As soon as he did it he could hear the growled curses from Jesse and Wallace. It occurred to him that he probably could have just gone over thing, but he was only half paying attention to what he was doing. The scanner was still empty and they were more than halfway around the city. Radcliff hadn't reacted at all to the sudden jerk of the vehicle.

  Ford was starting to feel depression creep across the console from the passenger seat. Radcliff's presence was dominating. There were times when being near Radcliff was soothing, uplifting, or emboldening. When his mood was good, it was hard not to feel good around him. Right now though Radcliff's sadness was all that Ford could feel. It was like no matter what Radcliff was feeling, it spilled over onto those around him. Ford knew it was one of the things that made Radcliff such a good leader, but he wondered if Radcliff did it on purpose or not. Ford had felt courage swallow his fear in Radcliff's presence before. That alone would have been a nice trick if he was doing it on purpose. It would keep morale up as long as Radcliff was in a good mood, but Ford had never spoken to Radcliff about it. He had a feeling Radcliff knew to some extent what he did with his emotions, but Ford never figured out a way to bring it up in a conversation.

  It took about thirty minutes to finish the circuit. There wasn’t a single new ping. Radcliff sighed. Ford felt Radcliff's depression crescendo when he came to a halt at the spot they'd started out from, but it quickly vanished, replaced with the resolve to move forward. Only one person had survived in all of Sangent, but it was time to pay the aliens back in kind. Even Ford felt himself starting to look forward to that.

  Ford stopped the truck on the north end of the city. He turned to Radcliff.

  “The sweep's complete,” Ford reported. “What's our next move?”

  “We're going to kill every last one of them for what they did here. Follow them.”

  “Yes sir.” Ford grinned. “Gladly.”

  6. Chapter Sixteen

  They drove all night. It was harder to follow the trail than any of them had anticipated. In the dark Ford had lost it several times and they lost hours backtracking. Nate had spent the night trying to sleep, but he was only able to slip out of consciousness for an hour or two at a time. When the morning came he was exhausted. His body had only been teased by the sleep he'd gotten. He felt like he might have felt better if he'd just tried to stay awake.

  They stopped in the morning to eat and to empty out their bowels. The suits handled liquid waste pretty well, but not solids. They took turns stepping out of the truck for as much privacy as they could afford. Nate didn't feel like he had any privacy at all when he was squatting on the side of the truck stripped almost naked. The cold morning air bit at him the whole time he was trying to take care of his business. It felt like the cold made his deposit take much longer than it should have. He felt awkward and self-conscious the whole time. He kept thinking someone was going to see him. It didn't seem like it had taken the others half as long as it took him.

  When he was done he put his armor back on. He had managed to end up being the last one to get to use the bathroom. When he was done, he gave the others a wave and everyone got out of the truck for a few minutes to eat and stretch out their legs a little before moving on. They all ended up on the front end of the truck to get as far away from the morning's leavings as they could while they ate their protein bars and drank their pouched morning drinks. Ford had a mug as big as his head filled with black coffee steaming in the chilled morning air.

  Ford had been driving all night. He looked like he was running on nothing but caffeine. His eyes were red, but besides that he looked surprisingly calm and awake, stoic even.

  “I can't believe how much of a lead they have on us,” Ford complained. “I was kind of hoping we’d get a half day today.”

  “The tracks look pretty fresh here.” Jesse observed. “They can't be very far ahead of us now.”

  Radcliff nodded. “We shouldn't waste time looking at tracks. It'll be much easier to follow them in the daylight.”

  “Sorry about that,” Ford said.

  “Why are we even doing this?” Nate asked. “Do we really want to follow these things back to where they came from? Why couldn't they have just sent Shadow Hammer after them? There’s only five us that aren’t injured right now. This army we're following destroyed Sangent in just a few hours. There could be thousands of them left! We'll be wiped out in minutes if they turn on us.”

  “Kid, we weren’t ordered to engage them,” Radcliff explained, “We’re just supposed to scout out the attacking force's point of origin. We have a beacon we're going to plant nearby that will transmit a signal strong enough for Guardridge to detect even through the Sarsaul's interference. If they sent in the warships all of the Sarsaul in the area would either go to ground or just turn and fight and we wouldn't be able to find where they came from. They won't think of a small group like ours as a threat. The bugs are kind of stupid like that.”

  “I guess that kind of makes sense,” Nate said.

  “Hey, Nate,” Jesse said, “Don’t tell me you don’t wanna get some payback for what those fuckers did to our home.”

  “Well, yeah, but…”

  “That’s the spirit,” Wallace said with a clap on Nate's back.

  “Well I’m glad to see you all agree about the value of this mission, but it doesn’t really matter what we want to do,” Radcliff said. “We’ve got our orders. We're going follow them home, tag the location, and get out of there as fast as we can. I promise you, we’re not going to unnecessarily put ourselves in harm’s way, Nate. There is some danger. We found that out with Lumar's injury and I'm sorry about that. I don't care for this tactic much either. It's risky, but it's been proven effective.”

  Radcliff turned back to the truck and put a hand on Nate’s shoulder. The weight of the arm made him lean down on one side for a moment. Radcliff gave him a sympathetic look. Nate felt a little better.

  “I don’t know how much farther ahead of us they are, but I bet we've still got a lot of ground to cover today. Ford, get us moving,” Radcliff ordered.

  “Yes sir,” Ford replied. “Take your seats or stay here.”

  Nate found his seat again as quickly as he could. He wished Lumar was down here with them. Jesse and Wallace were pulling down their harnesses and locking them into place while Nate sat in his chair hesitating.

  “I'm going to go up and check on Lumar real quick,” he announced.

  “Let him sleep,” Ford called back. “The body heals better when you're sleeping. Don't worry. He'll be fine. I gave him a look while the rest of you guys were taking a dump.”

  “Oh, okay,” Nate said. He sat down and locked the harness down in front of him. He still wanted to check on him for himself, but he didn't want to challenge Ford on it.

  In a moment Ford had them moving again. After a few minutes of silence, Ford cranked the classical music back up. Nate spent the next hour or so trying to keep his breakfast down. He was practically being forced to watch Wallace and Jesse whisper, laugh, and touch each other by the harness trapping him in his seat. He was saved only by the piano and orchestral pieces playing from the cab. The melodies covered up most of the words passing back and forth between the two lovers so he was at least spared most of the particulars of their exchange.

  Eventually, sleep saved him from witnessing any more awkwardness for a while. He napped for at least an hour before the truck ran over something that bounced them in the air. The sudden feeling of weightlessness jarred him awake in a panic. He only just kept himself from shouting by sucking in air
at the last moment instead of forcing it out of his lungs. Jesse and Wallace broke their gaze at each other for a few minutes to mock him, but the words were drowned out by a crescendo in the song playing.

  Nate's eyes shifted towards the front of the truck. There were a couple other seats up in the cabin behind Radcliff and Ford. He couldn't stand another minute of watching those two across from him. He released his harness and started up towards the front.

  “What's the matter?” Radcliff asked as Nate stood in the doorway.

  “Can I sit up here? Maybe look out the windows instead of...”

  “Yeah those two can be pretty gross,” Ford said. “I don't mind.”

  “It's fine for now,” Radcliff added. “Be ready to move if I tell you though.”

  “I will,” Nate said. “Thank you...sir.”

  “Those two probably wanted you out of their way anyway,” Ford said.

  “You saw right through us!” Wallace yelled from the back.

  Jesse said something that Nate couldn't really hear, but it sounded like she said something about not minding having an audience. After that the music completely drowned them out.

  Nate truly preferred to have a window seat on a long car ride. He took the driver's side seat and the moment he was buckled in he was leaning on the glass staring out at the landscapes that were rushing by. He guessed they must be in Nebraska at this point. The land was still almost totally flat out his window. Though that wasn't much different from Kansas where they'd started out from. They weren't following a road or anything so even if they had crossed the northern border of the state they wouldn't have seen any signs.

  There were hardly any trees, just empty plots of tall grass that almost reached the top of the tires. Nate could see how that made the Sarsaul's tracks easier to follow though. There was a gouge out of the grass where the Sarsaul had trampled it flat. The swathe was about three times as wide as the truck and Ford was keeping them right in the center of it.