by Kyle Noe
Syndicate Wars: Fault Line
George S Mahaffey Jr.
Kyle Noe
Justin Sloan
Elder Tree Press
Contents
1. Like Mother, Like Daughter
2. Beneath the Surface
3. With Us or Against Us
4. The Enemy’s Den
5. Family
6. Don’t Leave
7. The Departure
8. False Hope
9. The Descent
10. The Landing
11. Never Give Up
12. Under
13. Escape from Shiloh
14. The Stuff of Nightmares
15. A Glimpse into the Past
16. Glory In Death
17. Hail Mary
18. Too Far Gone
19. Downward Spiral
20. No Good Options
21. The Coup
22. War Without End
Author Notes
About the Author
Also by George S Mahaffey Jr.
1
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Samantha crept like a thief through a forgotten munitions warehouse, one of eighteen outer buildings (including several launch control support buildings), that ringed Shiloh, the former Francis E. Warren Air Force base.
She moved forward, a battered AK-47 in her hands as she removed a fresh magazine from her tactical vest and gently placed it into the gun’s mag-well before rocking it rearward. The weapon’s ammunition latch clicked and Samantha nodded to herself. The magazine had been seated properly, so she flipped off the gun’s safety. She was surrounded by a dozen Syndicate soldiers who were outside, readying to spring an ambush. She’d been foolish enough to venture beyond the watch of her mother, Quinn, and a small group of aliens, a hit squad of some kind she reckoned, had found her.
It was only a matter of time before they kicked down the doors to the warehouse, but she wouldn’t go quietly. She had thirty little friends who’d be willing to greet them if they did, she thought, running her fingers down the edge of the gun’s magazine.
Her tiny frame pressed against a wall, Samantha sucked in a few breaths, then counted several Mississippis. She kept the stock of the AK-47 up near her shoulder and the muzzle depressed, locked and loaded, ready to surge forward through a faraway door and open up on the aliens.
Taking to her heels, Samantha darted across the expansive warehouse. There were sounds on the other side of the door and she kicked it open, bursting outside, expecting hell and bringing her gun up and around in a sweeping motion.
BRAT! BRAT! BRAT!
She fired a burst from her gun, the recoil thrumming her shoulder as she obliterated a Syndicate soldier, blasting his battle helmet to pieces. The other aliens wheeled on her, surprised that such a small creature could be so ferocious. Before the invaders knew what had happened, Samantha was upon them. She swiveled at the hips, the gun bouncing against her shoulder, blasting through the remaining rounds in an instant. The enemy fell before her, the ground stained with the red and yellow fluids that poured from their stricken bodies in great abundance.
Samantha lowered her gun to the sound of somebody clapping.
Blinking, she looked down to see that the Syndicate soldiers were actually a collection of old engines and electronic equipment that she’d set atop a pair of plastic saw-horses. And the Syndicate battle helmet was little more than an aged computer monitor. Looking over her shoulder, she spotted Quinn moving toward her.
Quinn took the still-smoking gun from Samantha and studied it. “So how long has this been a thing?”
Samantha traded a long look with her mother. “Ever since the beetles started trying to kill me.”
Quinn looked up from the gun. “The what?”
“It’s a nickname on account of the aliens looking like bugs and all. Some of my friends came up with it.”
“Friends?”
Samantha held her mother’s gaze. “Yep. I’ve moved on from enemies and allies. I’ve got some real, live, actual friends now.”
Quinn popped out the spent magazine on the AK-47 and pocketed it. “You mean like the older guy back there?”
Samantha nodded. “Eli’s a righteous dude. He risked his life to help me. He was there when I needed him,” she continued, a little heat in her voice.
Quinn held up the gun and peered down over its barrel at the electronic parts that Samantha had just blown to bits. “Do you know what the hardest thing in the world is?”
“Taking down one of those mechanized drones has got to be right up at the top of the list,” Samantha replied.
Quinn lowered the gun and peered into Samantha’s pale blue eyes. “Being a parent takes the cake, kiddo, because you’ve only got one job to do, but it’s the most important one there is: keep your child safe at all costs. That’s it, and God help you if you do like I did…”
Quinn trailed off. She lowered the gun and knelt before her daughter. “I’m sorry, Sam. You took off before I could say anything in the silo, but I’m sorry for letting you down. I should never have left.”
Samantha took back the gun and waved a hand. “That was a long time ago, mom.”
“Four months! Besides, you’re twelve! You don’t have any long time agos!”
Samantha removed another magazine from her tactical vest and expertly slipped it into the receiver and readied the AK-47 to fire. “You don’t have to apologize. I mean, you did what you did to prepare me.”
“For what?” Quinn asked. “Years of therapy?”
“For the day when you’re no longer here.”
“That’s awfully dark.”
“Maybe a bit on the morbid side,” Samantha replied.
“I’m pretty sure it’s against the law to be morbid at your age.”
“The world we live in, mom,” Samantha said, with a shrug.
Quinn sighed. Mother and daughter stared at each other like strangers for a few awkward seconds. “So … are we cool or what?” Quinn asked.
“Like an Eskimo on an iceberg.”
Quinn looked at her daughter, thinking. “So what do we do now?”
“How about some mother-daughter stuff?”
Quinn beamed. “Awesome. Like what? Maybe go inside and play with some dolls or paint our nails and braid our hair?”
A playful smile tugged at the corners of Samantha’s mouth. “Mother. Seriously?”
Quinn returned the smile, but then her eyes narrowed. “So how ‘bout sending some lead down range with momster?”
Quinn stood over Samantha’s shoulder as she aimed at a cluster of bottles and rusted cans they’d salvaged from a base dumpster. Everything was lined up in ragged rows atop a clutch of wooden pallets. Samantha lowered the weapon and looked back at Quinn.
“Do you ever wish you had another kid, mom? Specifically, a boy?”
“How could you even ask that?”
“Because the world has basically ended and we’ve got to cram as much heavy conversation in as we can. I mean, we could die at any moment so I’m thinking we’ve got to live, like, all of my teenage years in the next few weeks at most.”
“You’re being silly,” Quinn said.
“So that’s your answer?”
“No, my answer is it’s a really weird thing to say to your mother. And that’s saying something coming from you.”
Samantha did a slow-burn.
“Fine, okay,” Quinn said. “The answer is no, no I did not want a boy. And you know why?”
Samantha shook her head.
“Well, it’s got a lot to do wit
h feral dogs.”
“Yeah, and I’m the one saying the weird things …”
“Listen, young lady. What I meant is, have you ever wondered why, when you see images of war torn countries there are always wild dogs running around?”
“Not something I typically think about, no.”
“It’s because canines can get by on almost nothing. Women are a lot like that. Men, on the other hand, are definitely feline. They put up a front, acting like they don’t need people and that works for awhile, but eventually you find them lying behind the couch.”
“Nice visual. So in your little analogy there I’m what? A stray dog?”
“That’s right, pumpkin,” Quinn replied, squeezing Sam’s cheeks. “You’re my little pitbull. A scrapper. Somebody who can get by on very little. You’re everything I hoped you’d be. Now let’s talk about that rifle of yours, because I noticed before that you’ve got a serious problem with your muzzle climb when you go fully automatic. You lost your ability to stay on target.”
“So what’s a girl to do?” Samantha asked.
Quinn fished in the pockets of her cargo pants and removed a three-inch piece of metal, a threaded muzzle brake for the rifle that could be screwed on. She tossed it to Samantha. “Screw that onto the end of your weapon. It inhibits recoil and rise.”
Samantha screwed on the muzzle brake and took aim at the collection of electronic parts. The weapon looked immense in her tiny little hands. “I’m going hot, mom.”
Quinn stood back, watching her daughter fire into the debris, a number of disordered thoughts competing for her attention. For starters, what kind of mother would stand idly by watching their pre-teen daughter fire out a friggin’ assault rifle? It was simultaneously the most absurd thing she’d ever seen and the most natural. The world had been turned upside down after all, and the old rules and norms had been taken away with it. The country had been robbed of many of its adults and in their place had been left children.
She tried not to think about how many others were out there fighting like her Samantha. Just trying to stay alive. There was nothing wrong with Samantha. She was perfectly normal, if a little too smart for her own good. Hell, Quinn had actually gone to college for two years and Samantha seemed to be her equal in everything but size. She wanted to believe that the whole wanting to be a pint-sized warrior thing was just a phase she was going through because of the invasion.
Quinn hoped that, once the enemy was defeated, things would return to the way they used to be. She kept thinking this thought over and over, as if repeating it, mantra-like, might make it so.
2
Beneath the Surface
They’d only been shooting for fifty minutes or so, but Quinn and Samantha had fired out a few hundred rounds. And the ground looked like it had been littered with the shells of a full-on battle. A moment later, a soft rain started to fall, washing away the dust from the rangelands, laying bare the base’s stark surroundings.
Now that their ammo was spent, Quinn led her daughter back across the base, keeping her eyes peeled on the sky. The pair slipped between buildings and beyond one of the steel hangar bays where the glider had been concealed in case the Syndicate came looking for it.
Along the way, they discussed the events of the prior weeks and Quinn talked about the other Marines, and Cody, and how each had helped her escape from the Syndicate.
“Everyone sacrificed in one way or another,” Quinn said. “Even Cody. It hasn’t been easy being away from you, not knowing if you were safe, but knowing that there were people by my side who were willing to take risks for each other gave me hope that the same was happening for you”
“Eli was there for me,” Samantha said. “At first I thought he might be some kind of weirdo, but he had my back. Then I had his. We saved each other’s lives. And he’s been tagging along ever since.”
“He’s like a stray cat,” Quinn offered.
Samantha smiled. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Samantha saw vulnerability in her mother’s eyes as she stopped and peered at the base, the buildings dark and deserted.
“Remember what I taught you that summer when we stayed at the farm after Uncle Mick died?” Quinn asked.
“If you’re gonna punch a boy, aim for his nuts?”
Quinn cocked her head and Samantha smiled. “Just kidding. You said there’s virtue to be gotten in pain, which frankly always sounded like something on a bumper sticker.”
“Samantha,” Quinn replied, raising her voice.
“Okay, so you also said I should never feel uncomfortable discussing what I’m feeling, especially with you.”
Quinn nodded. “Good girl. You and I are here for one of two reasons: either we’re so good that we survived the alien onslaught, or we’ve done some things that other people might not have been willing to do.”
A contemplative, almost sad expression came over Quinn. She stared at her daughter for longer than felt right, hoping Samantha couldn’t discern how uncomfortable she was at this.
She’d told her daughter to be fearless in unburdening herself emotionally, because that seemed maternal to her, something that a good mother would do. But the truth was, Quinn was more like her old man: tough, inscrutable. The kind of person who “kills their own dogs,” as her father was wont to say.
Sure, she and Samantha had spoken about the prior weeks and months, but they hadn’t talked about it. About the terrible things each had done in order to survive. Quinn was concerned that, if they didn’t discuss these things, they would always remain below the surface, festering until they birthed larger, more serious problems.
She’d seen it before, back in the Marines. Several of her former comrades had wigged out after experiencing horrors on the battlefield. She didn’t want Samantha to become unmoored as they had.
“Do you want to tell me anything?” Quinn asked.
“Like what?”
“Like anything, Sam.”
“If you’re asking whether I helped things go from this place to the land of the not living, the answer is yes.”
“Does that bother you?”
Samantha took a liking to the ground. “For a hot second it did, yeah. But then this dude, this resistance fighter, named Billups, told me about what he said was the pretty hate machine. He said it was a way of training yourself to see the things you’re shooting at as inhuman, so that you stop feeling anything for them.”
“You’re not to talk to this Billups ever again, by the way,” Quinn offered.
“Oh, no worries. He got blown up back on the road in Nebraska, I think it was,” Samantha said with a flick of the wrist.
Quinn tasted her own stale mouth and wondered if she should scream or cry at this. She had a startling vision of her little girl running into battle and instantly wondered what the hell kind of mother she was.
As if sensing this, Samantha whispered, “I know you worry about me, mom, and that’s cool. I mean, I worry about myself sometimes. This isn’t normal, I know that, but it is what it is. I’m like a shark now. I can’t look back. I have to stay in motion, keep moving forward or—”
“Or what?”
Samantha shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
Mother and daughter traded a long look.
For an instant, Quinn sensed something hopeful in the rain. As if the water might fall and somehow cleanse the area, taking with it all of the reminders of the past, all evidence of the things she and Samantha had seen and done.
“So what about you?” Samantha eventually asked. “I mean, what the heck did you have to do to escape from the greatest military force the Universe has ever seen?”
Quinn frowned but nodded. “They are superior to us in almost every way. There’s no denying that.”
“And you guys just stole a glider and walked right out of their command ship?”
“Pretty much,” Quinn answered, not pausing to think about how relatively easy it had been to orchestrate their escape. Too easy, a voice whispered somewhere
in the dark backwaters of her mind. The same voice that asked, over and over, if their captors were still watching everything they were doing, observing it all and, for some reason, letting it happen.
“So how ‘bout it?” Samantha finally asked, stopping her mother near the edge of an outbuilding, droplets of water coasting down her cheeks. “Did you kill anyone along the way?”
“Sure, yeah, we had to. I mean, it’s like you said. They are the bad guys, Sam.”
Samantha shook her head. “I meant people. Humans. When you were forced to fight for them, did you kill anyone like us?”
Quinn groped for the right words. She peered into Samantha’s small, inscrutable eyes, and could find no good response. Instead, she fumbled out, “I did what I had to do to make sure I saw you again.”
“Do you think that makes you … evil?”
Quinn digested this. “No, because sometimes you have to do bad to do good. That probably doesn’t make any sense at all, but I don’t know any other way to put it. You just have to try and minimize the bad as much as you can. At least I always do any time I pick up a weapon.”
“Is it weird that I liked it?”
Quinn shielded her eyes from the rain. “Liked what?”
“The fighting. I was scared at first, I mean I ran nearly every time the beetles came after us, but then after I stopped running from them and began running at them, I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Quinn tapped a finger on Samantha’s shoulder. “You learned the lesson of control.”
“What do you mean?”
Quinn opened her mouth and caught a few raindrops. “People with experience, even in extreme situations, are less likely to break than untrained people in significantly less danger. The reason is the perception of control. You felt like you owned your fate, didn’t you?”
