Dark Alignment

by David Haskell

  * * *

  “Reassigned?” The order hit him like a brick, and he began to wonder if the entire unit had simply checked out and gone insane. First they try to blow him up, now he was out?

  “Not exactly,”—Mansfield flopped into his worn out desk chair and lit a cigarette, violating about ten regs in the process—“you want?”

  Douglas shook it off. He was just six weeks into his latest quit, and it was finally starting to take. “Joseph, give me something here. I can’t believe that you’d have thrown the whole mission down the toilet just to let me go. What the hell is going on?”

  Mansfield nodded. He knew enough to expect resistance. “The good news is, you’re still with the unit. You’re not being transferred, officially.”

  Maybe this wasn’t so bad. “What is it, then?”

  “Call it a temporary reclassification. A matter of national security. That much I can say, but not much more. Even assuming I knew much more, which honest to God I don’t. This is big, Shane. Bigger than both of us. And they need you. You’re to report to Wilkinson Seabase. They’ll fill you in when you get there.”

  “Wilkinson? Jesus, what’re they looking to do down there?”

  The commander didn’t answer directly, instead handing over an official looking envelope with an expression of the utmost seriousness. It was a letter from the White House, marked private, cleared for secret and above.

  “I’ll leave you to read it,” Mansfield said, “we can talk after.”

  “I take it that means you’ve, ah,”—he tapped on the envelope—“got one of these yourself, commander?” He felt overwhelmed staring at the eagle on the seal.

  “A version of it, yes,” Mansfield said as he stepped over to the door. “Take all the time you need. Shoot me a text when you’re ready.”

  Shane nodded and gave half a wave, caught up in a sudden, potent curiosity. The moment the door clicked, he tore it open.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  Colonel Douglas,

  This letter is to inform you of an ongoing project pertaining to national security, and to which I require your participation. As ordered and detailed below, you are to report to Wilkerson Base on a directive from this office, to serve in an interim position as liaison to scientific staff and consulting research associates. They, and you, will be posted to base within the timeframe indicated below.

  This assignment pertains to and involves final selection of the SFO contingency crew. I have no doubt you’ll execute this assignment faithfully and with distinction. You can expect further instructions from myself or my staff in the near future, as well as an on-site tour of inspection which is being worked out with base command as you read this. I look forward to meeting you in person at that time. Until then I wish you godspeed. Your fellow citizens are counting on you.

  Sincerely,

  Jack Morrison

  Jack Morrison. The signature looked so simple. Casual, even. President Morrison. Seeing to this mission personally. What new threat could possibly have motivated the president to start assigning military assets from his own desk?

  Shane slowly slipped the paper back into it’s ripped container, having memorized the instructions down to the tiniest detail. He walked over to Commander Mansfield’s desk, sat down heavily in his bosses chair, and leaned back to feed the document into the shredder. He gave himself a minute, but only a minute, before texting the commander. It was time to resume the conversation, now that they were both up to speed.

  * * *

  “Space Force One’s being repurposed?” Shane’s incredulity was impossible to mask. It was also completely understandable. All military fliers of a certain rank were aware of the storied presidential escape ship, though no one ever expected it would see use, at least not beyond the requisite training sessions. It was like something out of science fiction. A dystopian tale nobody thought might come true.

  “Seems the case, colonel,” Mansfield replied, sounding as surprised as his friend. “They’re getting geared up over at Cheyanne as we speak.”

  “Jesus, they’re going to launch straight out of the mountain?”

  The commander nodded.

  Contingencies had been in place since before either of them had enlisted, with the Cheyanne launch scenario being one of the most extreme. The sort of nuclear or disaster scenario that might give rise to it was difficult to imagine, and yet now it seemed the government was looking at just those kinds of precautions. What the hell are they expecting, anyway? Shane wondered.

  “I’ve been given broad authority over crew assignments,” Mansfield said, “including my pilot, of course.”

  Shane swallowed, then pointed at his own chest.

  “It’s not for sure yet,” Mansfield warned, “still a lot up in the air. But that’s my preference. We’ve got a lot to take care of before we get to that bridge, though.”

  There was a ton of logistics to handle, that much was obvious from the orders. For some reason many of those matters were being handled at Wilkerson Seabase.

  “I’ll keep you apprised as much as I can, Shane.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Rising to his feet, Colonel Douglas gave his superior a salute, which Commander Mansfield returned with equivalent respect. “Be careful, okay? I don’t know what you’re getting into, but it doesn’t sound like a walk in the park. Pucker factor’s got to be off the charts.”

  Douglas nodded, walked out, and left the facility straight away. Despite the kind words of his old friend, he knew he didn’t belong here anymore.

  3.

  Twelve Weeks Prior to Anomaly

  Summoned to a farmhouse at the behest of a concerned neighbor, a small-town doctor discovered the first cases in a remote agrarian community. Scattered carcasses of farm animals littered the drive up to the main house, and inside the farmer was splayed out on his kitchen floor, sheet-pale and immobilized. Upstairs, his wife—the only member of the household left unscathed—was holding a vomiting child over the sink, while simultaneously applying an ice compress to the head of another. In the bedroom, three more children lay, in various states of distress. Across the hall, a farmhand lay atop a bed. From just a cursory glance, the doctor could see that rigor mortis had already begun to set in.

  In the town clinic, the staff was overrun with complaints, ranging from high fever and nausea to blood loss, hair loss, loss of bodily function control, and paralysis. Not to mention worrisome, gruesome wounds the likes of which nobody had ever seen.

  It was the same all over the county. As insane as it seemed, the likeliest cause was acute industrial chemical exposure, despite the lack of chemical plants in the area. The idea of a military cover-up began circulating, but these speculations fell by the wayside when fresh cases cropped up not only in far flung provinces, but even bordering countries. There had to be another explanation. Meanwhile the death toll rose.

  The sudden, pervasive nature of the phenomenon was beyond shocking. A full-blown panic was right around the corner, as the worst pandemic scenarios began to materialize. There was no predictability to it, nowhere to hide—the only hint of trouble came when neighbors started dropping like flies.

  Researchers were reluctant to drive out to the remote locations, fearful that the contamination zones might be wider than the authorities admitted. Even in full hazmat suits and gear, they couldn’t be completely secure, not if there was no detecting the chem-zones and how they might be spreading. You could suit up, of course, but when to take it off was the bigger issue. Thus the brave souls looking into the crisis were few and far between. In the larger cities, mayors and regional governors waited in terror for the first strike to hit a good-sized population center.

  The decimation of San Lorenzo, Paraguay occurred just six weeks after the first reported deaths. A sparsely populated city, relatively speaking, but a decent sized one for the area. But remote, and with scant resources to handle a crisis of this magnitude. They didn’t stand a chance. The volume of chemical whatever-it-w
as pouring into the city made recovery impossible. And the mass exodus guaranteed that no emergency responders could get anywhere near the place, all roads being jammed with fleeing survivors.

  The climate changers thought they had all the ammunition they needed, and they were fired up. The only problem was, the crisis was confined to the wrong hemisphere. As much as they tried to drum up support and fear, the simple fact was most of the world’s population had no interest in what went on south of the equator. There was little concern for anything that might be killing people down there, so long as it stayed where it was. Even as the cries rang out for help, the story was dying on the vine. Human interest, and nothing more. Even that dropped off the front page quickly enough, as the world grew accustomed. Several more cities lay in ruins, but none large enough to trigger a new news cycle.

  * * *

  Forward Listening Post Southstrike. The farthest outpost capable of executing such a mammoth-sized pluck and rescue, Southstrike was hip-deep in evacuees, with more pouring in by the hour. Aside from normal refugees, the sheer volume of burn victims forced them to perform mass triage on-site, holding over the worst for immediate treatment. In the frantic shuffle, countless potentially infected souls passed through without so much as a cursory examination. There simply wasn’t time, nor close to enough resources, and the promised reinforcements had not yet appeared.

  And that was just the overland situation. Numerous other refugee groups making their way north by sea were clogging up the shipping lanes, posing a danger to normal traffic. In a panic to escape, the sheer volume of bodies made the job of the various coast guards next to impossible. Southstrike was one of a number of remote facilities being repurposed for evacuation, but they were right in the thick of it—many more would starve or collapse if forced to move on.

  The Post, as personnel fondly referred to their temporary home, was a backwoods assignment, a relic of the cold war, when enemy ship movements often came as a surprise. Little came through the post that wasn’t already seen to by the main listening stations along the eastern seaboard. The assignment was more of a waypoint to future promotion than anything else. As such, snap and polish was kept to a minimum, and for the most part the rank system was more a formality than a day to day concern.

  Lieutenant Alia Myers was one of the lower ranking technicians, but she wasn’t made to feel inferior, so she had no compunction about speaking up when something seemed off. When the first of the Russian language transmissions filtered through, she thought nothing of calling up her immediate superior to ask for clarification.

  When her colleague showed up to help, she assumed it’d be taken care of in a matter of minutes. Yet they were still working on the puzzle an hour later when the relief shift showed up. But they, too, seemed at a loss to figure out just what the hell was going on. The team continued kicking it up the ladder until someone suggested a proposal worth considering, though it seemed every bit as surreal as any cold war scenario had ever been.

  It was unnerving for them to realize the Soviet Socialist Territorial Navy was actually on the move, repositioning into a strike formation for the first time in years. The first time since the reformation of their government, in fact, not to mention the first time since the cold war. They were placing themselves firmly on a war footing, and the timing in reference to the escalating disaster in South America seemed far from coincidental.

  “That escalated fast,” the duty officer quipped, trying to relieve some of the tension.

  It didn’t work. Nobody laughed. Not even a smile. Officers and crew around the facility began breaking out dusty procedure manuals. What to do in the case of a Soviet bloc interference scenario. Not a single one of them had any first hand experience, nor did most of the current crop of soldiers. They’d signed up with the intention of fighting ISIS or Al Qaida, ready for a terrorist threat far more than anything Communism-related. And yet, there it was, plain as day. The Russians were coming.

  * * *

  Jo’s date wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but that wasn’t a major priority. All part of the charm. And his cute features more than made up for it anyway. Besides, they were early on, still engaged in informal hangouts. She always arranged things this way before deciding on anything beyond casual. It was her method of exerting control, though the men never had a clue. Size ‘em up and fit ‘em for size, an old bit of advice she’d hung on to since the first she’d heard it. A way of avoiding any unpleasant surprises. This one didn’t need any help personality-wise, he had that department well in hand. But the way he handled himself, that was another story. She could fix that though.

  Jo looked him over with a practiced eye. “I think you’d look better in something grey,” she said, strolling to the shelf with an assortment of semi-autos and hand-cannons. “Ever mixed it up before?”

  He looked confused. “Mixed it up how?”

  She smiled, selecting a weapon. It was borderline green, manly, and had a lot more firepower than she’d ever seen him with. “You know, mix and match, go with something eclectic. Every time I see you it’s glocks all week, and deer-rifles every Saturday.”

  “How do you know I don’t mix it up on Sundays?” he said, smiling back at her as he took the proffered gun from her hands. “I’ll go squeeze off a few, see how she handles.”

  He was gone for several minutes, and she took the time to look at laser-scopes. Not the right season, but you never knew when you might find a bargain in these shows. She was getting a good vibe from this guy, the first decent date she’d been on since sniper season. It wasn’t easy to carve out enough personal time for friendship, let alone anything more serious. She’d just gotten herself untangled from a boatload of commitments that had sapped her time and energy for the better part of two years. Now that she’d wrapped up so many projects, she was looking for a little normalcy, and that always started with a gun show.

  He took his sweet time, which she normally didn’t mind. She wasn’t one to shirk the joys of anticipation. But even she had her limitations, and after ten minutes she started getting antsy. Probably exactly what he wants, she thought, craning her neck to see if he’d emerged from the shooting range yet. No sign of him. She was officially intrigued. Finally, she caught sight of him walking her way—wearing the satisfied expression of a man who’d just experienced that rush of power only a good weapon could provide. His ever-so-slightly aroused grin made the wait well worth it. She felt goosebumps. He looked good. Nothing turned her on more quickly than a man all testosterone-pumped and feeling invulnerable. He was just close enough to reach out and touch when her phone rang. So distracted she was by her deviously handsome companion, she picked up without looking at the caller ID first.

  * * *

  God dammit. I really liked him, too. She hated herself for answering, hurling epithets at herself as she peeled away from the gun show. It was so stupid. No good could have come of it. Nobody ever called with good news. Just work, work, and more work. He won’t call me. There’s no way he’s going to call me. His quick-shouted promise to call was just something you said in the moment. No way he calls.

  So much for the dating scene. Maybe next fall. Did they really need her right now? It’s not as though she was hard to track down when things got thick. They could’ve waited. Left her alone long enough to get to know the guy, at least. They were watching, they always were, so they knew damned well what she was up to. It’s just common curtesy, she thought. They very well could’ve waited. She could’ve waited. This had Director Zee’s fingerprints all over it.

  The racing of her brain caused her foot to press instinctively harder, already smoking up the road at an even hundred miles an hour, her custom corvette a blur when the cops clocked her. They wouldn’t catch up, but she did see them pick up the chase. Something had to be done before they radioed ahead, so she beat them to it, calling for a clean path.

  Within thirty seconds, the distant cops slowed, then pulled off. She passed three more squad cars that didn’t so much
as veer in her direction. Her business was beyond their level of access, and that was all they needed to know. She crinkled her eyes into the rearview. With it’s telescopic lens she could see every detail of that first furious patrolman barking into his radio. Little things like that made her happy, and she smiled and gave a little wave that would’ve infuriated him far further if he’d been close enough to see it.