by SD Tanner
“No. They lived in St Louis. They might be being held prisoner, and even if they did manage to get out, you wouldn’t be able to find them.”
His console flashed and buzzed at the same time, indicating he had an incoming conference call. Tapping the touch screen, he said, “This is Ark.”
Bill’s voice came through the speaker. “I’ve got Boris on the line. He wants to talk to us.”
The last conference call with Boris hadn’t ended well, and he wasn’t looking forward to the follow up discussion he knew they needed to have. “Go ahead.”
Leon rolled his eyes, but he frowned at him and placed one finger to his lips. He didn’t want Boris or Bill to know that Leon was listening to their call.
Boris’s authoritative voice boomed through the speaker. “I think you know why I’m calling.”
Although Boris’s attitude annoyed him, he replied steadily, “You’ve made your point.”
“No, I don’t think I have, Ark. We have an arsenal of missiles at our disposal and a country under attack, but apparently I need your approval to do what needs to be done.”
Bill’s voice came through the speaker. “I don’t think that’s true, Boris. You’re in command of NORAD.”
“I’m in command of fuck all here. No one is going to fire those weapons on my say so.”
“Why not?” Bill asked.
“They’re telling me that without a command structure in place, they’ll do whatever they think is right.”
“Err, I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work.”
He almost laughed at Bill’s accurate observation. The people left in NORAD should have respected the command structure, but he knew that they wouldn’t. With the government and military gone, this was anarchy at its finest. It wasn’t as if the government had ever held much credibility in the first place. The intent of big government versus its ability to deliver had always been a wide gap, but that wasn’t why they weren’t doing anything Boris wanted. When they’d followed his orders, all they’d done was make an already bad problem worse, and there was no chance they’d do as he asked twice. Throughout history, men had never followed bad leaders into combat, and Boris was just lucky that no one had shot him.
“They’re telling me they want input from CaliTech. Ark’s input to be precise.”
“Okay,” Bill replied steadily. “What do you think we should do, Ark?”
Leon shot him an amused look, and he shook his head at him, indicating he should remain quiet. “I think we’re doing what we need to do. There’s no point in bombing the nest. We don’t know if a missile will kill whatever’s inside of it. What we do know is the damn thing learns really fast. We can’t risk wasting a tactic unless we know it’s going to work.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Boris said angrily. “I’m proposing we drop a Minuteman nuke on it. Not too much is gonna survive that kinda hell.”
Bill replied, “Err, I think Ark has a point. What if it’s buried a mile underground?”
“Then we’ll drop more than one bomb.”
When Leon shot him a questioning look, he shook his head decisively. He’d already thought of this scenario. It was possible that the nest was a mile below the surface. Even if they nuked it there would be no way to know whether they’d killed whatever was inside of it. If it was as deep as he suspected, then they could dump missiles on it all day long and they still wouldn’t kill it.
“I don’t know,” Bill replied. “If it really is a mile underground then we don’t have any bombs designed to penetrate that deeply, no matter how many we drop. And we don’t know what we’re trying to kill either. I think we need more intel about the target before we decide how we can kill it.”
“Oh, so you think sending a whole bunch of untested robots into the target is a better idea?” Boris asked sarcastically.
“Well, I think that’s the core of our difference in opinion, Boris,” Bill replied firmly. “You think the target is the nest itself, whereas we think whatever is inside of it is the problem.”
“Just what the hell do you think is inside of it?”
Finally deciding to join their argument, he replied, “We don’t know, but I’ve met it.”
“What do you mean you’ve met it?”
“We believe it communicated with us through a woman it infected using the goo. It told me to die.”
“Bullshit,” Boris replied irritably. “You can’t take the ramblings of a dying woman as gospel truth. Just how damned stupid are you?”
“I trust the medical team. They have a leading neurologist on staff and she says the woman’s brainwaves are no longer human,” Bill replied.
“She’s not dying either,” he added.
“So, you won’t support me on this?” Boris asked.
“I don’t think you’re right,” Bill replied steadily.
There was a long silence and then Boris said curtly, “Fine. Go your own way.”
After Boris disconnected his call, he said, “That didn’t go well.”
“No, it didn’t, but we don’t have time to worry about what he’s doing. NORAD won’t launch any missiles without your approval, so he is where he is and he’ll just have to deal with it.”
Closing the conference line, he spun his chair to face the group in the command center. Amber and Dom were looking puzzled, but Leon merely smirked and said, “It’s your show, Ark.”
Lexie had told him he needed to take command, but he hadn’t been sure how he could. Given their current situation, simply declaring himself as the leader wouldn’t work. Realizing there was no one to appoint him to the role he’d thought long and hard about the sort of leader he’d be prepared to follow. Honesty, loyalty, dedication, commitment and best intent were characteristics everyone had inside of them, but people often set those strengths aside and were only driven by their needs. In his view, a leader wasn’t made or born, but they were constructed from the best attributes that existed inside of every person.
He’d remembered lying in the hospital bed after learning he would never be the same man again. A part of him had wanted to let go and stop caring about himself and his future. No one would have blamed him, but if he’d allowed his wounds to define him then he would have become a living casualty of war. It had taken every ounce of strength inside of himself to turn away from that future. Giving up would have meant handing over his self-respect to a faceless enemy, and he’d decided he would rather be an angry man than a sad one. He’d rebuilt himself by setting aside the voice that had told him to quit. By only listening to the best parts of himself, the voice of his weaker side became smaller until he could no longer hear it. Leading this mission demanded the same inner strength. He had to set aside his own needs and draw on only the best inside of himself.
Acknowledging Leon with a curt nod, he replied, “I say we need to match our enemy. He’s a smart little fucker, so we need the intel and that means we need the baby bots.”
“Okay, so is that my highest priority?” Leon asked.
“Yeah, but let’s test the new weapons at the same time.”
Amber shot him a worried look. “But what about the families we promised to look for?”
“It’s been seven weeks since the country fell. They’re either safe or they’re not, and finding them sooner rather than later won’t make much difference.”
“But you promised.”
He sighed deeply. “And we’ll do it, Amber, but I didn’t promise to make it our highest priority.”
CHAPTER NINE: Friendly fire (Boris)
His knees and lower back were killing him, and he absentmindedly chewed on the Vicodin instead of swallowing it. So many parts of him hurt he’d lost track of just how many times he’d been injured. Twenty-three years of active service had left his body with an accumulation of damage, but it came with the job. Today was a bad day, and he limped around the small sleeping area, stuffing items into his backpack.
The conference call with Ark and Bill hadn’t gone well a
nd he was done. They were convinced the critters were some sort of super species, intelligent and cunning in a way that would be difficult to defeat. According to their medical team, the critters didn’t have a brain, and he didn’t understand why they believed brainless, rubbery creatures could be so smart. They had a theory that the brain controlling the critters was hiding under the pyramid in Pueblo Pintado. He wasn’t sure they were right, but he was willing to blow the hell out of it just in case. It frustrated him that they would ignore all of the weapons NORAD had available just to gather more intel about something he wasn’t even sure existed.
Although the pill had dulled the sharp pain in his back, his left shoulder still tweaked at him as he slid his arm through the straps on his pack. If he remembered rightly, he’d dislocated it when he was in his thirties and it had never been quite right since. If he’d lived a sedentary life, none of his injuries would have bothered him much, but staying in peak physical condition was important to him. Running thirty miles a week and lifting weights might keep him fit, but it came at a price. Stepping out of the building, laughter echoed around the bunker, and he knew the rest of the survivors were eating, sleeping and working much as they always had. He didn’t bother to say goodbye. It wasn’t as if they would try to talk him into staying.
NORAD had many exits and he took the one that would lead him underground to another military base. The emergency lights in the corridor were still powered by the banks of generators and rows of batteries inside of the bunker. If there was one thing the military did well, it was to over-engineer solutions until they were so rugged they were virtually indestructible. While he padded quietly along the corridor, he remembered his last field command. He’d been assigned to the sandbox for Operation Iraqi Freedom. He’d successfully established several key forward operating bases deep inside of enemy territory. It hadn’t been easy to carve out a little bit of America in a country that hadn’t wanted them there. After acknowledging his success, his Commanding Officer had told him he was being reassigned to the Pentagon. Technically, it should have been a reward, but it felt like a snub and later proved to be one.
Despite delivering what was asked of him, he’d received no awards or medals other than those handed out to any deployed officer. He was sidelined into a liaison role in the Pentagon, filling his days reading press releases and approving documents for publication. It was a real sucker punch, and when he’d asked what he’d done wrong, no one could give him an answer. For reasons that were never explained, he was never deployed again, and it had taken a few years to get his career back on track. He’d spent a lot of time wondering how he’d failed during his deployment and concluded that he just wasn’t a good politician. After all, Ark had outwitted him from the moment they’d escaped in NORAD and he was still being bested by him.
The corridor was cool and he continued to pad along it, hearing his rubber soles squeaking slightly against the floor. He needed to find likeminded men who believed in action first and then he could form his own army. Even without the missiles, there was plenty of other devastating firepower at the many bases across the country. One way or another, he would have his day against the critters.
Finally reaching the end of the corridor, he opened the door and found only darkness behind it, indicating the lights were not powered by NORAD. He had anticipated this problem and flicked on his headlamp. Like the other corridor, it was empty and he made his way along it to the door at the end. Using the keycard he’d brought with him, he opened the door. More darkness greeted him and using his headlamp he hunted for an exit. The next door opened into another empty room where daylight was shining brightly across the desks and chairs, briefly blinding him.
When he could see clearly again, he noticed there were brown stains smeared across the floor. Desks had been overturned and all of the furniture was lying at awkward angles. It looked like there’d been a hell of a fight and the bullet holes in the walls confirmed his suspicion. No corpses were left, but given the critters ate their enemies he wasn’t surprised. Outside of the room, it was a typical military base with medium sized buildings. Desert and army green colored vehicles were parked carelessly on the sidewalks and along the neat roads. A flag still fluttered overhead, but otherwise it was deathly quiet.
Unsure what to do next, he stood at the top of the few steps leading from the building and surveyed the base. It should have been busy, but it wasn’t. Bill had told him that seventy-five percent of the population were either dead or critters, leaving only a quarter of the people in the country still alive. Of those left, a good proportion were being held captive behind fences built around the high population areas and cities. He figured at least half of the remaining people were hiding and he needed to find them. Between the combined forces, there were over a million trained troops plus the veterans, and amongst the survivors, he expected to find people who knew how to fight.
Holding his gun ready, he began walking across the base looking for a message. He didn’t believe the soldiers who had survived the massacre at the base would have left without saying where they were going. To his knowledge the critters couldn’t read, so he moved as quickly as his aching knees would allow to the front gates. The barrier leading into the base was gone. Walking past the sentry box, he crossed the road and turned around. Someone had thoughtfully sprayed words along the wall next to the gate.
“Go to Fields Landing. Near Eureka. Northern Cali.”
A self-satisfied grin spread across his usually grim looking face. Soldiers didn’t just give up when the going got tough. They formed teams, consolidated their resources, and got ready to bitch slap anyone who got in their way. Bill and Ark were wrong. They were assuming that technology would save them, and they hadn’t even thought to look for where the army might have gone. When he came back to NORAD it would be in force, and then he’d do exactly what he knew needed to be done.
Now confident he’d made the right decision, he walked back into the base to find a working vehicle.
CHAPTER TEN: Blind love (Lexie)
The Navigator squad were moving around the hangar, adding more ammo to their growing pile with their guns lying on the table next to it. All of them were wearing their sensor layer and hydraulics, and Ark was running system tests to check their gear was working. Having agreed they would test the new weapons while they retrieved the programmable chips, Candy and Jenkins were working at another table preparing the laser and sound guns. Ark had wanted to shore up the defenses around the site, so she and the squad had spent the past few days installing a combination of the lasers and standard weapons along the walls protecting CaliTech.
Sally and Donna walked across the concrete floor, and the sharp click of their boots on the ground echoed around the largely empty hangar. Clearly hearing their footsteps walking towards him, Ark spun his chair around.
“What’s up?”
Donna flicked her head towards Leon. “I hear the squad is heading out and we want to know when we’ll be getting new recruits.”
“What do you want to know that for?” Leon asked.
“We need a training plan.”
She’d already been trained by Donna and said, “We already train navs. What do we need another plan for?” When Leon, Tuck and Trigger laughed loudly and even Tank snorted, she asked indignantly, “What’s so damned funny?”
Ark rolled his chair until he was close enough to take her by the hand. “You know we love ya, kid, but you’re not a soldier. I mean, you can’t shoot worth shit.”
His large hand was as damaged as they told her his face was, but she enjoyed the complexity of the scars, and traced them with her fingertips. “I do alright,” she replied sulkily.
Leon walked past her carrying more of their supplies. “Sure you do, but we need people who can shoot.”
“But the computer can auto target, so what’s the problem?”
Taking his hand from hers, Ark replied, “It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be so reliant on the tech. I wouldn’t even let you go
outside of the wire if you weren’t with the squad.”
He was always so protective of her, and she couldn’t understand why he’d never taken their relationship any further. Never having seen herself, she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was attractive or not. Her experience with men was limited, and although technically not a virgin, she couldn’t claim to be experienced either. Being in love was something she had yet to feel, but Ark was the voice in her ear that kept her alive when she was in combat, and she couldn’t deny she had a crush on him.
Joining them at the tables piled high with the gear for their mission, Donna asked, “How are you gonna find people who already know how to shoot and are fit enough to use the gear?”
It was a good question. They had a thousand Navigator suits and no troops to use them. Bill had rejected the idea of training the preppers unless they agreed to move to CaliTech. He was paranoid the preppers would leave with the gear and they’d lose the edge they had with the Navigator tech.
“Jonesy said he’s going to the military bases to see if anyone is left,” Ark replied.
Leon gave Ark a surprised look. “People can’t live in large groups anymore. I doubt there’s anyone living at any of the bases.”
Shrugging, Ark replied, “He’s gotta start somewhere.”
“Well, we need to plan how we’re going to train people,” Donna said. “I need to know what to train them in.”
Nodding, Ark replied, “Good point. We need to put them into squads of five with a lead.”
“And you need to train them to fight in formation,” Leon added.
“Plus they need to know how to use the weapons,” Jenkins said.
Donna was making notes on her tablet and Sally said, “We should also run them through some psyche testing to decide whether they’re suitable.”
