"Are we slowing down Berg 78615?"
"Retro Gravity Generator is engaged. The ship is slowing down, Lieutenant Dean Blaze."
"Can you change the readings to English now?" Dean asked.
"Yes," the computerized voice said.
There was no shouting, no celebration, just utter relief on the faces of his platoon as they patted one another on the back and slumped down to the floor in their battle armor.
The display on the floor showed the gravity generator at only 18 percent power. Dean guessed that it had come online but perhaps at only one percent and the reduction in speed was so minimal that the Valkyrie hadn't recognized it.
How high can I safely raise the power on this Retro Gravity Generator?" Dean asked.
"Fifty percent will bring the vessel to a complete stop."
Dean turned the machine up by swiping his foot across the number reflected on the floor. He watched it increase until it hit fifty, then he too collapsed against the wall.
Chapter 46
As the ship slowed to a halt, Dean sent his specialists to search the ship, while he returned to the Navigational Control Center. He received one message from Vice Admiral Hamilton swearing to ruin his career and see him brought up on charges of treason. Dean thought that unlikely since he had just saved the EsDef decades, perhaps centuries, of research and technology development.
The alien ship was surrounded by EsDef vessels in less than a day, and the halls of Berg 78615 were filled with curious professionals soaking up the advanced technology.
The Wolf Pack was taken to Space Base 13, Grooms Lake, to be debriefed. Dean's TCU was downloaded and sifted through with painstaking slowness. Eventually he was exonerated of all charges, his platoon given commendations for their actions on Newton Six and for intervening on the Urgglatta ship. They were also rewarded with a month's liberty on Earth, all but Dean, who was grilled with questions about his actions. He was kept in lockdown on the space base, unaware that his name was being celebrated on Earth as a hero.
Days passed and word trickled down to Dean that Vice Admiral Hamilton had been promoted. The thought of the manipulative woman who was willing to sacrifice his platoon to further her political agenda infuriated him, until he learned she was given command of a gas and mineral refinery in a lonely system with no habitable planet. It was a shit job, the kind used to force trouble-making officers to resign. Dean hoped it worked on the woman he would forever think of as the Wicked Witch of the Valkyrie.
Dean was handed over to handlers who spent hours prepping him for his new role as the hero of Earth. The media was in a frenzy to interview the handsome, young Recon officer who had saved the planet. The story they were told was a fantasy dreamed up by the EsDef brass in an attempt to save face after the actual events that transpired on the Valkyrie. Before he was taken down on a publicity tour, he was visited by Captain Parker.
"Look at you, hero of the hour," she said as she was allowed into his small berth on the space base.
"Captain Parker, it's good to see a friendly face."
"The media handlers aren't treating you well?"
"They won't let me do anything. All they want to do is have mock interviews and try to trap me into saying I think EsDef is doing a bad job defending humanity."
“Force Recon faces every enemy without hesitation or fear, surely you can handle a few reporters."
"That's what I keep telling them. But they don't think I'm ready."
"You will be, soon enough. And instead of fighting strange creatures on colony planets, you'll fight vicious rumors and a growing tide of fear at home. That battle is just as important as any tour off world. Remember that."
"I will, Captain."
"And perhaps, one day, we'll take the field together."
"I would like that," Dean said.
"Just know that no matter what happens, I can still kick your ass, Lieutenant."
Dean laughed for the first time since saying goodbye to his platoon, and it felt good. He was given the opportunity to chat with Major Gheridelli via vid conference. They discussed the various tactics of large-scale planetary warfare.
And eventually he heard from Captain Esmerelda Dante, who had been reassigned to the E-S-D-F Interceptor. She was happy for Dean, but there was an obvious tone of regret in her message. She had made him a video message before leaving the system on her new ship, and he watched it over and over, memorizing every detail of her face.
He wasn't allowed to reply, since Dante was on a tour and out of the solar system, and she wouldn't get his message for months as personal correspondence wasn't given priority when an officer was off world. Dean understood that cold, unyielding fact, but he didn't like it. Messages could pass across the vastness of space via FTL communication drones, but he had no way of knowing what system she had been sent to, since that information was classified. So it would do no good to try and respond. He would wait for his chance to see the exotic Spanish operator again.
When the EsDef handlers finally shuttled Dean down to Earth, his life felt like a circus. He was on news shows, interviewed by journalists and magazine writers, taken to lavish parties where he was toasted again and again. The centerpiece of the tour was a stop at the EsDef world headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, where the President of the United States awarded Dean the Planetary Medal of Honor, the highest citation he could receive. He was promoted to captain, and sent out for another round of interviews and public appearances.
In almost every instance Dean was asked to tell the story of his platoon's intercept of the Urgglatta ship Berg 78615. And then the questions began. He was forced to speculate about the Kroll. How did he think they would approach Earth? What did he think they should do to prepare? Was it possible to defeat a violent space-faring species? Dean did his best to answer every question honestly, but he had no idea how the Kroll might threaten them. When asked about the future and the warlike race that would shortly discover them, his answer was always the same.
"They may look at humanity like we're just a bunch of helpless sheep, huddled together for safety," he would say. "They may see EsDef as the shepherds of a young, space-faring race. But what they will surely discover, if they choose to challenge us, is that we aren't the shepherd, we are the wolf."
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Chapter 1
He pushed her dead body over the side of the boat with one last heave, then fell to his knees and watched his wife sink down into the dark waters. She wasn’t really his wife, not in the traditional sense. No one had time for civil ceremonies once the plague struck, and religion had all but vanished after millions of unanswered prayers. Still, he had loved her and considered her his wife as they struggled to survive. They had been waiting for a cure, and when that didn’t happen, they decided to start a family and make a life for themselves. Then Helen lost the baby. Forty-eight hours later, Todd lost Helen. They didn’t know how to stop the bleeding and even though Todd had amassed an impressive pharmacy over the many months since civilization had ground to a halt, he had nothing that could save her. Instead he was forced to watch her slip away.
He had cleaned her up and sat with her for a few hours. There was no way to embalm her and in the tropical heat, her body deteriorated quickly. He wrapped her in a sheet, then struggled to carry her body out of their cabin and up the narrow stairwell that led to the deck. He had been proud of the fact that she had gained weight with the pregnancy. She’d been frustrated by cravings for food he couldn’t get her, but she had eaten well and the extra weight only made her more beautiful
to Todd. Unfortunately, when they lost the baby and Helen was slowly dying, Todd hadn’t eaten. He was weak from hunger and grief, so carrying Helen exhausted him.
He slumped against the smooth fiberglass rail of the yacht panting for breath. He briefly considered throwing himself into the water. It would be a merciful end to his pain, but Helen had made him promise not to kill himself. He had agreed, but he wanted to die anyway. Still, there was a small part of him that kept fighting for survival. He staggered into the galley and opened a can of tamales. They were greasy and spicy. Todd thought they were delicious right out of the can, but they had given Helen indigestion so Todd had been saving them. He ate the entire can and then drank a bottle of water before falling asleep on the leather sofa in the yacht’s opulent living room.
Todd woke to the painful realization that Helen and the baby were gone. Tears spilled down his cheeks and his grief threatened to paralyze him. He wanted something, anything to numb the pain, but he couldn’t waste the precious medications he had collected. He decided instead to make for land and see what he could find that might help him cope.
He opened the tinted glass door that led to the deck. The sun was beating down in a merciless onslaught off the southern tip of Florida. Todd wasn’t sure of his exact location; the yacht had been adrift for nearly a week. He climbed the slightly curved staircase to the upper deck of the ship, where he kept the solar panels and battery compartments. The yacht had been brand new when Todd took possession of it. The billionaire who had built it wanted something small enough that he could pilot by himself.
Todd had worked as assistant harbormaster for over six years; he knew every ship that was kept in the massive complex of ships of the Atlantic City boat yard. When the riots started and it was clear that nothing could stop the plague from turning the world population into insatiable, flesh-eating zombies, Todd took Helen, who had only been his girlfriend for a month, to the boat yard. They filled the yacht with supplies and set sail.
Todd didn’t take them far, just a few miles off the coast. The yacht had excellent radio and satellite communication equipment. Todd and Helen had spent nearly two weeks listening as the world came to a screeching halt. One by one, the radio stations went off the air. Eventually the power grid around Atlantic City fell, and with it went Internet and cell phone service. Todd discovered with the yacht’s onboard equipment he could still receive signals from the GPS and weather satellites overhead. All they needed was power, which came from gasoline generators on the ship. Unfortunately, after two weeks, their fuel supply was running low, as was their ration of food and fresh water.
Todd and Helen had no trouble finding supplies; it was getting those supplies on board the yacht before the undead chased them back out to sea that was the problem. Occasionally they came upon other survivors, usually in small groups that were armed to the teeth. Newcomers were rarely welcomed, and Todd had no desire to stay on the land where he and Helen could be easily overrun by the herds of ravenous zombies. So they stayed at sea, monitoring the airwaves and dreaming of a time when things might return to normal.
Todd was devastated that Helen had died so young, never seeing their baby, never finding the relief from a world that had turned against them. Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to give in to the pain and grief that wanted to overwhelm him. Instead he checked the connections between the solar panels. He had installed them after discovering a warehouse full of green-energy products. The solar panels could keep the yacht’s appliances and communication gear running, as long that they didn’t use the air conditioner. Todd also had a locker full of wave generators, which looked like small buoys connected by a thick, waterproof cable. They generated electricity from the rocking action of the waves. They worked best when the yacht was close to shore, or when bad weather made the seas rough.
The small cockpit was filled with small view screens and video displays to help the pilot control the ship. There were the usual weather monitors, along with satellite feeds and sonic range finders that revealed what was beneath the ship. The yacht had a gas-powered engine and an electric secondary engine. Todd did his best not to use his supply of fuel, which meant that most of the power produced by the solar panels and wave generators went to the secondary engine. There were small water pumps all around the hull that gave Todd a full range of movement. Controlled by a thick joystick that was built into the tall captain’s chair, he could use the secondary engine to turn the ship on a dime and travel 20 nautical miles a day. From the cockpit, Todd could see out of the thick windows in every direction; with the monitors, he could see hundreds of miles around him and even under the ship.
He settled into the big chair, immediately feeling conflicting emotions. Piloting the yacht which had once cost millions of dollars, gave him a sense of control over his world, which had been cruelly hijacked by the plague. In that moment, he also realized that his Helen was truly gone. He had no idea where he’d dropped her body, and there was no way he could ever find her again. This time he didn’t try to stop the tears. Instead he let his grief pour out in racking sobs until he was exhausted. Then he sat back up in the captain’s chair and turned the yacht toward land.
Chapter 2
Miami was never an option. The once booming city was now filled with the living dead. Whenever Todd passed the metropolis that was once home to over five million people, he could see the reanimated bodies searching endlessly for food. He had no idea what caused the plague. The news had called it a bio weapon, a virus, and a judgment from God. No one really knew what caused the dead to rise up and attack the living, but a few things were clear—something in the brains of the zombies reactivated the neural pathways and called the dead muscles and tendons to action. Gaping holes in their flesh or missing limbs couldn’t stop them. The blood-thirsty monsters didn’t even notice the physical wounds unless it impacted their brains. A blow that damaged the brain was the only way to stop the zombies, and Todd’s guess was that it destroyed the nervous system that continued to function after the rest of the body died. Without that control system, the zombies were helpless. How the disease spread was a mystery, as was its origin.
Todd sailed his yacht north, stopping at a small harbor in a tiny town called Foxboro just south of the Miami metroplex. There were, of course, houses all along the coast, but the population of Foxboro was much smaller than many other harbor towns. Todd and Helen had stopped there more than once without incident. The refueling station at the harbor still had gasoline, as well as a reservoir of fresh water. Todd steered the yacht up to the refueling dock and let it glide into the soft rubber of the old tires that lined the wooden structure. He hurried down and tied the yacht down. The large, gleaming ship seemed out of place beside the simple, sun-faded wooden dock with its aging pumps and barnacle-covered pilings. The fuel pumps were simple contraptions from a bygone era. Todd fed the hoses into the fuel receptacles and then used the manual levers to pump the fluid into the nearly empty tanks.
It took several minutes to get the fuel flowing, and Todd was unnerved by the silence. Even the small towns had eventually succumbed to the Zompocalypse, and even though Todd hadn’t seen or heard any zombies, he knew they could appear and ruin his plans at any moment. He always tried to get what he needed as quickly as possible if he was on the mainland. Being out to sea was the only place he ever felt truly safe.
The handles of the gas pump were rusty and each stroke down or up, made the metal creak and groan. The only other sound were insects humming in the overgrown weeds near the abandoned convenience store that once served the ships in the harbor and the inhabitants of the small town.
Once Todd had the fuel tanks filled, he turned to the fresh water reservoir—a large plastic barrel. The yacht held 250 gallons of fresh water in its internal tanks. Seawater was used for most things, even washing in the glass-walled shower. The fresh water was used for cooking, drinking, and occasionally rinsing the salt off after a shower. Personally, Todd preferred to drink from the five-gallon bottles used
by the stainless steel water cooler. He already had three of the refillable containers, but he was always looking for more.
He breathed a sigh of relief once the water tanks were topped off. If worse came to worse, Todd could live off the canned goods in his galley for a few weeks still, but he wouldn’t last long without fuel and water. Even with the green-energy devices, having the fuel tanks full and ready made Todd breathe easier. He almost started to call to Helen and let her know he was going ashore, but then he remembered she wasn’t there. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned against the sturdy wooden piling. There were moments when he felt like his whole world was flipping upside down, and in those times, it felt good to have something solid to lean on.
He opened his eyes and pulled the big laundry bag off the edge of the yacht. It was a simple mesh bag with a drawstring top, but Todd put it to good use whenever he had to scavenge for supplies.
The convenience store wasn’t far from the dock. It was a simple building of cinder blocks painted bright white. There were signs still in the windows with prices on fresh fruit, meats, and seasonal goods. Todd couldn’t help but wish for fresh meat. It had been ages since he’d eaten meat that didn’t come from a can. The convenience store seemed to be empty. In the bigger cities, looters had cleaned out whole supermarkets even before things got really bad. Todd found that in the smaller communities it was much easier to find food, but he and Helen weren’t the only people to have stocked up on the wide variety of foods in the small town’s only store. There was one other public building in the little town; it served as the city hall, police department, and post office, but it had nothing of interest to Todd.
We Are The Wolf: Wolfpack Book 1 Page 26
