by Alex Mersey
“I was restless.”
“You were keeping watch, Sean.” She blew out a breath, and seemed to blow that edge out with it. “Do you really think the Silvers will attack?”
“They’ll always attack,” he told her. “It’s just a matter of when.”
“And having an escape plan and an early warning trigger, maybe?”
He already knew—she’d let Johnnie wander about without her, she felt settled here, safe—but he had to ask. “What are you trying to say?”
“This is a pretty neat setup,” she sighed. “The army, the town, the thick band of forest stretching into the mountains. This place has everything, including a quick escape into the wild. And did you see those guns?”
He had seen the pair of surface-to-air missiles mounted on light artillery vehicles, for all the good they would be against the Silvers battlecruisers. In all honesty, he was more impressed with the number of working vehicles they had here than the fire power. The two LAVs, the jeep they’d hitched a ride on, and a tactical vehicle large enough to carry the troops, supplies and pull wagonloads of all the other essential crap.
Sean finished his eggs in silence, then he put his fork down and picked up his mug, looked at Lynn over the rim as he sipped. “You’re thinking of staying here with Johnnie.”
“I want you to think about it,” she said. “You’re not getting rid of us so easy. If you leave, we’re with you.”
“Lynn, I don’t have all the answers.” If only he did. If only he could dictate their next move with confidence, persuade them all to follow him wherever that took them. Lynn. Johnnie. Beth. Alli. But that would be selfish, irresponsible. “Maybe the army can protect you, maybe this town can feed you, maybe I’ll just lead us all to an early death.”
“You misunderstand.” Lynn reached across the table to place her hand over his. “I’d never lay that burden on you. I make my own decisions for me and Johnnie, and we’ll live and die by that. And this is my decision. We’ve made it this far together, we’ve looked out for each other, and I put more faith in that than anything else.”
“I do, too.” He felt eyes on him and glanced across the tent. “I still don’t like the idea of staying longer than we need to.”
“Then we don’t,” Lynn said.
“Okay,” he murmured vaguely, distracted by the woman standing just inside the tent flap, standing at half-attention, that other half directed on him.
Dressed in unflattering fatigue bottoms and regulation brown t-shirt, army boots, she somehow made the whole package shine. Almond shaped brown eyes softly focused on him, ponytail scraped back over high cheekbones, full lips, sexy hips, long legs…
“Sean?”
“Huh?” His gaze dropped to Lynn. “Sorry, were you saying something?”
She turned in her seat to look, then spun back to him with a laugh. “Oh, my God, the world ends but some things never change.”
He drained the dregs of his coffee and played dumb, mostly for his own benefit. Now was not the time to get interested in anyone. He nudged a look at Lynn’s empty mug. “You done?”
At her nod, he collected her mug along with his dishes and stood. “I’d like to take a walk into town and see how Alli’s doing.”
“I’ll fetch Johnnie and meet you there.”
“Do you know how to find him?”
“Rachel said the river runs just behind the camp, in the trees,” she said, pushing her chair back. “Apparently it’s only ten minutes up the river to the caves.”
Lynn waited for him to deposit the dirty dishes so they could walk out together and, yeah, his gaze drifted to the almond-eyed woman, still there, still soft-focusing on him.
“Mr McAllister?” she called as they approached.
“Sean.” He smiled through his surprise. “Just Sean.”
She didn’t return the smile. “The Captain would like a word with you.”
“Again?” Both him and Lynn had been interviewed by Captain Davis last night, separately. “What’s it about?”
“I’m not in the habit of questioning my commanding officer.”
Lynn stifled a laugh, not very well, and gave him a small push. “I’ll see you at the doc’s place.”
The woman did one of those about turns and marched ahead, leaving him to catch up.
“I didn’t get your name.”
“Sergeant Woods.”
He fell in line beside her. “Does that come with a first name?”
“Don’t do that.” She arched a haughty brow at him.
So damn sexy. “Small talk?” he said, innocent as a lamb.
“We’re not in a bar and I don’t have a drink in front of me.”
“That’s a tall order just to get your name, but I’ll see what I can arrange.” His mouth hitched, another smile escaping. As if any of them had anything to smile about. Damn. This was really a bad time for his brain to go all half-cocked over some beautiful woman.
They’d reached the captain’s tent, set slightly apart between the medic tent and a stand of velvet firs, and she limited her response to, “Think you can wait out here without irritating anyone?”
“Probably not.”
“Try,” she said with a droll look and left him to it.
Sean amused himself by watching her gorgeous butt walk away until he lost sight, then he looked around. The captain was busy with someone, he could hear the muffled voices through the canvas although he couldn’t pick out the words. Above, pale gray clouds swept in from the east, chased by a flock of birds. He capped a hand to his brow against the sun, tension adding a new layer of aching stiffness to his shoulders as he studied the formation.
Birds, only birds.
Still, he kept watch until the flock soared south, and then he spent another long minute searching the skies before he breathed out and brought his eyes down to the camp.
A dozen soldiers going through some kind of drill maneuver in the fields beyond the tents, a couple of others milling about. Private Ritter stuck under the hood of one of the LAVS with mounted artillery, parts and tools strewn around his feet.
Sean ambled closer to the makeshift motor pool area. “Engine trouble?”
The man pulled out with a grimace. “Engine’s the only part I don’t have trouble with. The old Ford motor I put in is a beauty.” He scrubbed his jaw, leaving streaks of filth and oil. “Now I’ve got to rig everything else up to bypass the electronics.”
“I thought these vehicles were running.”
“Nah, only the tactical and the jeep.” Ritter kicked a tire. “The LAVs are just glorified trailers until I get this figured out.”
“Does this work?” Sean asked, moving around to the missile bed.
“Not with any of the fancy stuff, but yeah, there’s a manual aim and fire override.”
His interest in the missile deepened, but he didn’t have time to find out more. Captain Davis emerged from the tent with Williams and waved him over.
Williams greeted him with a nod. “Doctor Jeffries sounded pleased with Allira’s progress this morning. Looks like she’s doing okay.”
“Thanks for the update,” Sean said. “I was on my way there to check on her.”
“I won’t keep you long,” Captain Davis said, leading him away into the sectioned tent where a small map table with six fold-out chairs served as his operational room.
Sean pulled out a chair and sat. He’d included the action that had gone down at the farm during their previous chat, but maybe the captain had second thoughts about their vigilante justice now that he’d slept on it. He was a solid man, heavy jaw, dense bones and wide chest. The kind of man who could prop the world up on one shoulder while he stole a moment to lay down the law.
Sean sighed. “Is this about the farm?”
“Not the farm, no.” Davis took the chair across from him, leaned back and crossed his arms. “I want to talk to you about Star Protocol.”
“Please tell me that’s our secret space defense program to blast the Silvers back to their own
galaxy.”
“I wish I could.” Davis gave a dry chuckle. “Nothing quite that elaborate, I’m afraid, although it does take its name from the stars.”
His mouth flattened. “The Silvers hit us hard, took out our comms, transport, weapon delivery systems. Our means of reporting enemy sightings and deploying an offensive are severely limited.”
Sean digested that, didn’t need to say anything. The captain had explained the source of the EMP last night. The Base Ships, all thirteen of them, had emitted a simultaneous radial of pulses that had webbed across the globe and wiped the world’s technology blank.
“Star Protocol is the fracturing of our defense force,” Davis went on, “into small units, such as this one, clustered around the country like stars across the skies. We’re SPU 14 of the 56th SBCT of the 28th Infantry Division. That’s Star Protocol Unit 14. The SPUs allow us to form a manual relay network and have troops in place across the states.”
“Seems like a decent strategy,” Sean said, not sure why he was privy to what sounded like classified information. “How do you communicate with each other?”
“Pigeons.”
Sean blinked. “You don’t mean actual pigeons? As in pigeon carriers?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Davis said, “although we use foot soldiers, of course, to bring us messages, and take our messages. Each pigeon runs a route back to our base command, two hundred and sixty klicks south west from here, and should pass through roughly once a week. It’s not ideal…”
Davis shrugged, sighed heavily. “The good news is, our base command has a field radio. We only have a couple dozen of those, old vacuum tube radios dragged out of storage, that still work. But our engineers have managed to rig up antenna towers that boost the signal hundreds of miles from each base command. The Silvers might have fried our tech, but…” He tapped his temple “…they didn’t fry our brains.”
“What’s two hundred and sixty klicks?” asked Sean. “Fancy terminology for the distance the signal travels?”
Davis grunted a laugh. “A klick is a kilometer. We report to the 56th, and they’ve relocated to a base camp north of Harrisburg, two hundred and sixty kilometers south west of here. That’s where the top level decisions come from, but each SPU has a designated grid area of about a hundred square miles.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“Hence the name, Star Protocol,” Davis said. “Stars glow brightest at the center, where our unit is stationed, and fade out with a hell of a lot of dark space between the clusters. My job is to hold the grid, defend it, but in all honesty most of that effort will go into the town and immediate surroundings. It’s a symbiotic relationship. In return, we can draw on the nearby towns and farmland for food, supplies, support, men to bolster our ranks.”
“You intend to turn the townspeople into soldiers?”
“You don’t think every man, woman and child will have to learn to fight in order to survive this war?”
“I do, actually, but—”
“Precisely, I knew I could count on you to have a full grasp of the situation,” Davis cut in.
Sean frowned at him. “What exactly are you talking about? Compulsory drafting? Martial law?”
“Unfortunately not,” Davis said. “President Merrick amended the original protocol to introduce a compromise. That’s where you come in.”
Since Sean doubted he’d been mentioned by name, he shut up and blanked his face.
“I’m expected to appoint an ambassador to manage relations, checks and balances, so to speak.”
“By your appointment?” Sean said with a flare of irritation. “Sounds to me like an empty gesture to keep the voters happy.”
“Some commands may well choose a puppet figure, and many, many more have the integrity to abide by the president’s wishes and the sentiment of that amendment.”
Sean cleared his throat to cover a cynical laugh.
“More to the point,” Davis said without comment, tone neutral, “we don’t have the time or resources to wage a civil battle or put down anarchy. You’ll have my ear, I guarantee that. I need an intermediary as much as the people in this grid need someone to manage their best interests.”
Ah, so that explained Williams’ presence earlier. “Williams turned down your offer?”
“I never offered it to him,” Davis said flatly. “Williams has others priorities.”
“Well, you should probably reconsider that,” Sean said. “Or maybe the town mayor? That seems like the logical choice.”
“You don’t understand, McAllister, you will be my liaison with the mayor so that I don’t have to deal with him. You’ve been out there, in the heat of battle. I need someone who can be practical about the sacrifices required and rally the people.”
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” Sean told him. “I’m no leader.”
“You brought your people safely out from Ground Zero. You lead them across a wasteland, through Silvers attacks, you got them here in one piece.”
“We did that together.”
“The day I left for West Point, my father told me something that’s stuck and proved true time and time again. A man is not judged by his words, or his actions, but by the words of those who follow him.”
Davis unfolded his arms to lean forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled in front of him. “I went to see Beth this morning. I spoke with Lynn yesterday. I’ve heard what Williams had to say. I do not make this decision lightly.”
“Neither do I,” Sean informed him. “I’m sorry, but even if I thought I was the right man for the job, we’re moving on as soon as Allira’s sufficiently recovered.”
“So you said.”
“So I said.” And nothing had changed between their last conversation and now.
“And where will you go?”
Sean shrugged. “As far from the Silvers as we can get.”
“And what happens when you run out of country before you outrun the Silvers?”
We’re fucked, that’s what. But staying would just make that happen sooner. “How long do you think the Silvers will leave you alone here to play happy families?”
“No one’s playing happy families.” Davis leant back again, his gaze sinking into Sean with a furrowed brow. “We’re preparing to defend ourselves, and I sure as hell hope we’ll get the opportunity to mount an attack at those bastards. We’ll be ready for them when they come.”
Sean looked at him, really looked, trying to match the argument to the man. Captain Davis was a career soldier, staying for the fight was built into his DNA. But deep down, did he honestly believe they stood any chance?
And if he did, then what did that make Sean?
A survivor or a coward?
“Our cities are lost, our entire defense machine has been crippled and dispersed,” Davis said. “No one’s coming to save the day, Sean. This war will be won by people like you, like the good folk of this town, like my small unit of soldiers who will take back our country or die trying.”
“You can stop now,” Sean said quietly. “You had me two minutes ago.”
They couldn’t outrun the Silvers.
They shouldn’t have to.
This is our damn planet.
Thank you for reading Salt of Gomorrah and I hope you enjoyed this first book in my Silvers Invasion series. Please don’t forget to give this book a quick review on Amazon if you’re able. Even just a couple of words, “Liked it” or “Not for me” reviews help so much. I’m grateful for all feedback from my readers, good or bad.
And if you’re wondering what happens next (which I seriously hope you are) the second book will be out shortly, Beasts of Byron.
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