Nina told her adopted daughter, "I’m sorry, honey. I really am. This will be over in a few days I think. We’ll see about next weekend. We were already celebrating a little late, so what's another week, right?"
"Yeah, Mom, whatever."
The line clicked, a burst of static, and the connection broke.
---
The black painted Eagle transport ship cut through the frigid darkness above the Till plains of western Ohio.
Nina Forest did not remember the first time she rode in an Eagle air ship. That memory had been one of a year's worth of memories wiped away by the aliens known as The Order. She also did not remember how to fly an Eagle, a skill Trevor Stone taught her before the stealing of those memories.
She did know, however, that humanity had captured four Eagle air ships from the invading force nicknamed "The Redcoats" during the battle of Wilkes-Barre six years ago. The ships exemplified humanity adapting extraterrestrial technology for use against the invaders.
Engineers improved upon the alien design and now Eagles rolled off an assembly line at the old Philadelphia shipyards for use as transports, command vehicles, and cargo carriers.
This flying machine amazed Nina because of the lack of aerodynamics. Indeed, the Eagle resembled a flying brick sporting a triangular nose cone with a thin long windshield. Twin engine baffles marked the rear of the rectangular passenger compartment while landing gear sprouted from pods at each corner. Anti-gravity circuits in the undercarriage kept the Eagle aloft and the hydrogen-powered engines—fueled by fresh or desalinated water--pushed the ship along with a ride as smooth as an ice skater gliding across a frozen pond.
Most of the Eagles wore white paint but a few dressed in different colors, such as Nina's black special operations ride that night.
Nina knew how to fly helicopters, even big Blackhawk transports and Apache gun ships, but she had not found the time to take a training course for Eagle flight.
Captain Forest shook those musings from her mind and glanced around the compartment.
A small sealed bulkhead led forward toward the cockpit while another bulkhead led to the aft engine room. Storage compartments lined the walls of the passenger module and two sliding doors would open to the outside at the right time.
She shared the windowless yet brightly lit passenger compartment with the rest of her Dark Wolves team.
Oliver Maddock sat in one of the high-backed bench seats reading an issue of Know Thy Enemy, a magazine devoted to the thousands of different monsters that had come to Earth alongside extraterrestrial armies and overrun humanity nearly seven years ago.
Nina knew that a military expedition had traveled to the Arctic Circle and retrieved a device that shut down the alien gateways. The Empire had uncovered one such dormant gateway just outside of Atlanta; a big green arch serving as the Hivvan springboard in their assault across the American south.
From what she heard, the device recovered from Greenland also made it possible to send captured aliens home, a sort of one-way return trip to their planet of origin. A backlog of Hivvan prisoners waited in cells in Pennsylvania to take that trip. The location of this device, however, remained a closely guarded secret.
Alas, the Earth retained an incomprehensible number of dangerous alien life forms ranging from prey such as herd animals and giant rats to predators like armor-plated Jaw-Wolves and carnivorous Giant Jellyfish. Those animals did not need gateways to increase their number, they merely reproduced.
As for the sentient extraterrestrial races such as the Hivvans, Platypuses and Red Hands, they had descended upon the Earth seemingly to murder or enslave mankind. Often times the invaders fought amongst themselves, but just as often they worked together to attack Earth's indigenous population.
Nina did not understand why Maddock wasted his time reading Know Thy Enemy. Like her, Maddock received the most up-to-date information on the invaders including hard, scientific facts from scientists conducting tests on captured creatures at the underground complex in Red Rock, Pennsylvania.
Carl Bly, meanwhile, studied creatures of another sort as he sat in a corner "reading" a new issue of Playboy. The headline lured, "Girls of the 1st Armored Division!"
Vince Caesar, the fourth member of the Dark Wolves team, busied himself with cleaning his weapon. Caesar, she knew, read every report from Red Rock and would not allow his mind to be distracted by pornography, unless ordered to do so, of course.
Nina pulled a photograph from the pocket of her black BDUs and stared at a picture of the blond girl who called her 'mother' and who had recently turned thirteen.
Mother.
Nina did not know what that had meant in the old days, but she knew what it meant in the post-Armageddon world. It meant making sure Denise went to school. It meant standing in line at the distribution center to get enough food for the week.
It meant telling Denise that, no, she could not build bonfires at Highland Beach with the older boys from school. Nina did not care that Denise could fight with the skill of a second-degree black belt or that she could plug a Gremlin in the forehead at twenty yards with a handgun. The girl would be in bed at a reasonable time and not hanging out with older boys anywhere, let alone the beach at night.
It meant taking Denise to the doctor--where the lines were often times longer than the distribution center lines—for vaccinations and check-ups. It meant scrounging enough of the new 'continental dollars' so Denise could buy a cool skirt for the school dance.
It meant a lot of things that translated into headaches, heartache, shouting matches, spending lots of money, and bouts of self-doubt the likes of which Nina never experienced in all her life.
And it was worth every last second.
Then again, most of the time it was Barney—the caretaker at the complex where she and Denise lived—doing those things with Denise. The wounded combat vet treated the kids of all the military families living in the apartment building like his own, and Nina knew from the start she would spend most days away from Denise as part of her role in the war. Truth was, very few 'traditional' families remained anymore. None of that made it easier to be hundreds of miles away from the one person in the new world who gave Nina a reason to live other than battle.
The cabin intercom buzzed and the pilot announced, "Two minutes to LZ. Stand by."
Maddock and Bly stowed their magazines. Caesar re-assembled his rifle in seconds.
The bright interior lights switched off, replaced by a soft red glow.
Nina slipped on a black ski mask and warm gloves then wrestled a heavy backpack onto her shoulders. Next, she strapped a scabbard to her leg and checked the sword inside. That sword held special meaning to her; a prize won from the Mutant who had held Denise hostage in Wilmington, North Carolina.
With everything in place, the Captain led her team to the starboard door and waited.
Her stomach fluttered as she felt the craft descend, her body rocked forward and then back as momentum slowed to a stop.
"Prepare to disembark."
The side door slid open. A bitter breeze gust in. The red interior light radiated out and illuminated a patch of frosty dirt. The four members of the Dark Wolves jumped into the untamed wilderness more than thirty miles behind enemy lines.
---
The first rays of dawn glimmered over the horizon.
Nina’s team had spent the night--a long, brutally cold night--nestled amongst the barren thickets atop one of the soft hills riding the gently rolling plains. Those plains marked the start of the corn belt: some of the best farming land in all of what used to be called the United States.
Most of that fertile land sat neglected. However, Nina and her team spied a stretch that had not withered: a farm house and barn with a field stretching behind. With the growing season long over, the farm equipment sat idle but the field appeared disturbed, as if it had endured the tilling, seeding, and harvesting cycle in the not too distant past.
From their position, the wolves observed t
hree dozen men, women, and teenagers moving about a big house, a barn, and what appeared to be a guest cottage. At night they had watched the lights go out one after another, in the morning they watched the residents draw water from a well, feed livestock in the barn, and check game traps around the edge of their farm, finding several mice and rabbits in the process.
Despite the livestock and farmland, the majority appeared hungry and desperate. Their clothes—threadbare at best---hung from slumped shoulders on scrawny frames. They wrapped themselves in table cloths, curtains, and burlap sacks to face the cold. Through binoculars, she saw rotting teeth, bruises, and sores; the signs of malnutrition.
She did not find this surprising. When they came upon survivors they usually found people half-starving and mentally beaten by a world in which mankind no longer lived atop the food chain.
However, a number of the residents appeared in better condition both physically and in dress. Again, not surprising; she saw this plenty of times, too. The bigger the gun the more likely a thug could grow himself into a warlord. Although she refused to jump to conclusions based on a few hours of study, she suspected that some tin-pot dictator and a handful of friends controlled this farm, living off the fruits of others with the threat of violence.
Still, as Captain Forest watched the farm come to life that morning, she felt certain this was a colony of human beings, not The Order’s converts or aliens in disguise.
Carl Bly, next to Nina among the dead thickets, whispered, "Whachya thinkin', Cap?"
A freezing January wind blew across the frosted hill, reminding Nina of the uncomfortable night they had spent in the wilderness. Overhead, puffy white clouds raced across a blue sky as if late for a gathering storm.
"Unless someone here sees something I don't, I think we've got a bunch of survivors. I don't detect any threats."
"Looks clean to me, Cap," Vince Caesar agreed.
Bly added, "I'd sure like it a Hell of a lot better down there inside that farmhouse than out on this hill. It has got to be warmer in there. I see smoke coming out the chimney."
Maddock nodded his head enthusiastically at Bly's idea.
Nina said, "We’re early but let's introduce ourselves."
The four commandos stood and descended the slope. They were half way to the farmhouse when the residents caught sight of the visitors. One hurried into the main house. A few moments later a group of people rushed to meet the soldiers at the edge of the property.
A woman with shoulder-length brunette hair covered by a knit hat and watching through green eyes led the welcoming committee. She and her escort were from the better fed/better clothed faction of the community. She appeared unfazed by the early arrival.
"Nina? I’m glad you came!"
"Yes, I’m Nina Forest. Do I know you?"
"It’s me. Jo. Jolene Crawford. We were friends, right?"
Captain Forest studied the dark-haired woman bundled in winter clothing.
"Jolene. Jo Crawford?"
"Yes," and she turned to one of the men on her flank and said, "See, I told you she'd know me. I knew it!"
"We can have a transport here in a few hours to get you and your people out."
"That's awesome," Jolene struggled to suppress a bout of giddiness. "I knew we could count on you. Thank you for coming."
"How many people here?" Nina asked.
"Ah, well, there's a few. And we've got lots of stuff we might want to take back. Maybe your boys here can help us sort out what's what."
"You said in your radio message that there was a threat," Nina decided to move beyond the niceties. "What were you talking about?"
"My boss can break it down for you. C'mon inside."
Nina turned to her team and looked them each in the eye as she instructed, "Check out the rest of the camp here. Take a census of the survivors and their condition."
While her words sent one message, the glare in her eye contact sent another. A message of caution and suspicion.
Jolene and her escort then led Nina toward the farmhouse. As they approached, the scrawnier-looking residents stepped aside, like peasants scurrying from the path of royalty. Stranger still, they regarded her—Nina—with something akin to awe. Eyes widened, jaws dropped, and she overheard hushed gasps.
They entered through a rickety front door. Jolene led Nina into the house's living room. The only light there came from slivers of sun sneaking in through seams between drawn curtains.
Jolene presented, "Here she is."
Nina saw a shadow on the far side of the room.
A voice spoke, "Well. Isn’t this something."
The voice sounded oddly familiar to Nina. She knew it from somewhere.
The shadow moved closer.
Nina saw.
From somewhere far away, she heard a shout of warning—Vince, perhaps—and the sharp report of a solitary gunshot. From behind, she sensed concealed weapons drawn.
Yet none of that mattered. The sight in front of Nina held her attention to the fullest. As that sight came in to focus, her senses corkscrewed as if her mind fell into a whirlwind. Nina gasped short breaths. Her entire body shook.
"No…it’s not…it’s not possible."
The combat veteran, the mother, the natural-born warrior…
Nina screamed.
2. Toy Soldiers
A cloud of dust kicked into the sky by a column of advancing armor…rockets roaring from artillery batteries…the zing of bullets and the dull clap of grenades…these were the sounds of battle; the music that beat time to humanity’s war of survival.
Trevor Stone—Emperor Trevor Stone—could see it all.
In his mind.
With his eyes he saw only push pins and order of battle charts; aerial photography and casualty reports. These were the swords he swung from his seat of power in the second floor office at the lakeside estate in Pennsylvania.
The biggest of the maps on the desktop illustrated the expanse of his Empire. The borders hugged the Mississippi river from the Gulf coast north to Illinois then retreated eastward along the Ohio River to Army Group North's position near Columbus.
New England, several Canadian towns along the northern border, Florida, New York City…all "liberated."
An eclectic combination of monsters and alien armies invaded Earth on a late June day six years and seven months ago. On that day, a mysterious entity dressed as an old man told Trevor that he must survive, fight, and sacrifice to save humanity.
During those early months, each dawn felt like a precious gift because living until sunset of that same day seemed a tall task.
After the Battle of Five Armies—so nicknamed by Dante Jones in reference to a famous battle from Tolkien's The Hobbit—'survive' changed to 'fight'.
To his surprise, Trevor found a knack for taking the downtrodden refugees of man's collapsed civilization and transforming them into armies of murdering mobs. Yesterday's store clerks and accountants, teachers and lawyers, found new purpose as soldiers crusading against the invaders.
Slowly they expanded outward from Trevor's lakeside estate. First he found individual survivors and some families, then remnants of the U.S. military, and then hidden colonies at campgrounds or in isolated towns and villages.
As he found more and more survivors, his cause grew into a small nation. Many of those survivors came from alien slave camps overrun and liberated, others—like Ashley, the mother of Trevor's son--rescued from globs of green goo into which they had mysteriously disappeared in the early days of Armageddon.
Then came the Hivvans.
The Grand Army of the Hivvan Republic controlled most of the southeastern United States. With air forces, armor support, and intelligence units, these bipedal reptiles possessed the trappings of evolved warfare.
They fought a series of pitched, combined arms battles. Artillery bombardments and dive bombers; infiltration units and armored spearheads; the vocabulary sounded eerily familiar despite an enemy of extraterrestrial origin.
&nb
sp; Trevor’s finger stopped on a dot south of Wilmington along the Atlantic coast: New Winnabow, North Carolina.
He closed his eyes and could nearly hear the village elders denying his forces passage despite explaining that failure to let his forces through would derail a critical strategic maneuver.
After exhausting every avenue of negotiation, Trevor sent a swarm of his personal warriors—the K9 Grenadiers—to wipe out New Winnabow.
In the year and four months since that slaughter, humanity made more gains—both in territory and resources—than in the previous four years combined, and the defeated Hivvans deserved the credit.
Instead of outright murdering the human population, these reptilian aliens preferred to capture and enslave. With each victory, Trevor released more captives, growing the free population significantly. The liberation of Columbia, South Carolina emancipated ten thousand people alone. The following year nearly three times that number escaped bondage when the Hivvan capital in Atlanta fell.
Furthermore, the Hivvans turned the large cities under their control into fortresses and cleared the surrounding wilderness of threats. In short, these invaders eliminated scores of dangerous alien monsters, making humanity's job that much easier.
The Hivvans unknowingly helped Trevor's cause in one other way. They brought to Earth powerful equipment that re-arranged the atomic structure of matter. This form of alchemy allowed the aliens—and eventually humanity—to turn useless or abundant materials such as scrap metal, wood, or wastewater into important resources like rubber, iron ore, and petroleum.
As the Hivvans retreated, the agriculture-friendly lands of the south came under human control and the food supply vastly improved, nearly eliminating starvation despite a population that recently broke the one-million mark.
Beyond Armageddon: Book 03 - Parallels Page 2
