Doc Jensen shook his head. “Portals can only send; they can’t reach out and grab you or an object and pull you back. Neither can the Kaerin’s, technically. Remember how the Strema were trying to get to their portal in the gulf, to return to Chandra?”
“Yes.”
“It was a different portal entirely from the one they used to get here. Portals allow one-way traffic; they always push, like a river flowing in one direction.”
“I understand,” Jomra said.
Jake grunted in laughter. “Then you’re the only one of us besides the doc here, who does.”
“How soon can we have access to this . . . phone booth?” Jomra asked. “Our, what did you call it, Elisabeth? Expe . . .?”
“Expeditionary Force,” she answered.
Jomra shook his head and smiled. “Our . . . force is nearly prepared.”
“Technically, we can send you anytime,” he spoke up. “We know how to get to Chandra using our permanent portal here. It’s getting you back and establishing communication that is reliant on the device Dr. Jensen was referring to. Right, Doc?”
“That’s correct.”
Hank nodded at the Jema’s leader. “It’s up to you, Jomra. We’ll send your team where and when you want. But again, and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, we strongly advise you to choose a location that is remote and secure.”
Jomra took his time and looked at each of them. “I thank you for your people’s help in this. The decision of where to go has been made.” Jomra looked over at Audy and gave the slightest of nods.
“We will ask that you send us to the area you call the Baltics. It is the land that gave birth to the Jema. The Kaerin pulled us from that soil to plant us on what you call your Iberian Peninsula.” Audy nodded back at Jomra. “The Jema are going home.”
Kyle, all of them, could feel the formal weight of Audy’s words. All of them, except Jake.
“Audy?” Jake countered, “You told me there was another clan living where the Jema originally came from.”
“To our knowledge, there is,” Jomra answered.
“I would advise you to portal to an area you know is empty,” Hank added. “From a safe location, work the edges, gather intelligence, and find a location you can operate from for the long term. You need strategic depth.”
“I have learned this term.” Jomra nodded. “And I would agree, if I did not believe the Kaerin must come to fear us. If they do not feel threatened there, they will be coming here. We have chosen small islands in the sea you call the Baltic. There, on land our ancestors once called home, we will make our return known.”
It was said in a way that bore no argument. Kyle knew the pressure Jomra was under from his own people. It was a dynamic that he knew the clan leader couldn’t have imagined very long ago.
“I believe you say to ‘keep a low profile’?” Audy asked. “We will do nothing to raise attention, and thanks to your help, we will be equipped to deal with any situation.”
“Nothing,” Kemi agreed, sending a meaningful look to Audy.
“I still think you should try for something other than the Baltic,” Jake suggested. “Britain or Ireland isn’t so surrounded. The Baltic is a dead end—one way in, one way out.”
“It is decided,” Jomra repeated.
“OK,” Jake relented after looking around the table for support that wasn’t there. “How’s the fishing there?”
*
Chapter 7
Nebraska, Earth
“Seems crazy to split up like this.” Derek Mills glanced over at the pair of big four-wheelers, each attached to a small trailer, loaded with extra fuel cans. They looked like ruggedized, modern versions of dune buggies; two bucket seats and a roll bar. The Carlisle boys, Danny and Josh, each sat behind the wheel of one waiting for him and his very pregnant wife. Derek thought the two cowboys looked like characters from some cable channel dedicated to hunting.
A single large halogen light, set on a pole high above the Ballard’s’ farmyard, gave the scene a familiar feel. Like one of those zero dark early deployments his truncated military training had included. This could not have been more different, though.
His limited training, in purely military terms, was at the forefront of his mind at the moment. He was a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose patriotic streak and deep bank accounts had led him to try something different. He’d joined the Army, and quickly found himself sidetracked to TF Chrome. He’d personally recruited his then girlfriend, Denise, to the team. She’d had a cushy job working as a programmer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena at the time. They’d enjoyed their time in the Task Force. It was as far from what he had expected in the military as he could have imagined.
His and Denise’s jobs had usually come down to enabling Tom and Brittany’s access to someone or someplace so they could “deal” with the mission goals. He’d known what those goals entailed, and it hadn’t bothered him. But he hadn’t ever been at the wet end of the Task Force’s activity. That was Tom and Britt’s rice bowl. Now, he was responsible for all of them, Denise and their unborn baby, and his insurance policy was two rednecks who could not have been more different from him.
“Denise is the only one who can possibly get that machine turned on and charged up by the time we can get there.” Tom didn’t like splitting up, either. “You have all of the old man’s instructions, the map?”
He patted his fanny pack. “Yeah, that’s not what I’m worried about.”
Tom followed Derek’s gaze to the Carlisle brothers who had assured him that they could get them to Idaho without coming to the attention of the “Feds.” That all-encompassing term that had come to mean the arms of the US government, which had been given the mission to quell any internal resistance during what they affectionally referred to as ‘social leveling’ on the television newscasts. It usually just meant the ISS; but if you were traveling, you had to take into account any local law enforcement that now reported to the ISS, as well as the Army or National Guards of Nebraska, Wyoming, or Idaho that would have been given responsibility for maintaining the checkpoints at the state borders.
“Strange as it may sound, I trust them. They remind me of some folks I grew up with. They don’t know the word ‘quit.’”
“They don’t know a lot of words, Tom.”
At least Derek had been smiling when he’d said it. Tom privately worried more about his team’s chance of success than he did about Derek and Denise.
“Trust them, Derek. They’ll get you there. Remember your training.”
Derek shook his head. “A young black professional couple, woman seven months pregnant, in the company of two outlaw rodeo professionals with bounties on their heads, not to mention poor control issues. You know? . . . just hanging out together, doing a little camping and off-roading. Would you believe that cover story?”
Tom felt himself smile. “Don’t get stopped, Derek.”
“No shit.” Derek held out his hand, and they shook.
Britt walked up and gave Derek a hug. “Four days to get there, Derek. Expect us ten or so days after that. Hopefully, Geoff’s machine will be ready to do whatever it does by then.”
“Be safe, boss,” Derek said, as she let go and walked over to where the local version of the Clanton gang sat on their ATVs.
Tom and Derek watched her walk up to the two cowboys. Tom could see from his wife’s posture that she was about to put the fear of God into them. He almost felt sorry for the two brothers. Tom figured Danny and Josh were both every bit as tough as they thought they were. But there was tough . . . and then there was deadly. Britt would be explaining the very clear difference between the two. In short, easy-to-understand terms.
Tom waved at Derek sitting behind the wheel of the Carlisle’s off-road truck, “The Mudder,” they called it. To Derek’s point, the whole scene was as ridiculous as it looked. Denise was sitting in the passenger seat, six feet off the ground, and comfortable. That was all that mattered.
Tom walk
ed up to the two ATVs where the Carlisle brothers were saying their goodbyes to their sister and brother in-law, Grant.
“You got your route?”
Danny tapped his head. “Got it. Won’t even need to look at the map until we get to Idaho.”
“We spent a couple of winters working the gas fields in Wyoming,” Josh added. “We know service roads that aren’t on most maps; shouldn’t be too bad.”
“Alright.” He shook hands with them both. “I just wanted to wish you luck.”
He turned to go, but Josh stopped him and then looked over at his brother in question.
“What is it?”
“Uh, we were just wondering.” Danny smiled and shook his head. “How it feels to be the bravest man in the world.”
“Huh?”
“Your wife!” Danny blurted out. “How do you manage to close your eyes at night?”
Tom just nodded slowly in understanding. “I lock myself in my man cave, and sleep on the couch if she’s irritated. If she ever truly got pissed off, I don’t think I could run far enough, or fast enough.”
Tom knew Britt had put the fear of God into them; he was just twisting the knife a little.
*
Denise thought of their line of vehicles as a caravan of man toys. They’d been on dirt roads all night, steadily headed west by northwest. She knew that because the Carlisles’ lifted truck, riding on oversize tires and following the two ATVs, had one of those ball-shaped spinning compasses mounted on its dashboard. She did her best to ignore the compass’s chrome mount, shaped like an unnaturally endowed naked woman. The sun was just starting to come up by the time the cowboys leading the way slowed and pulled them off the road into a small flat area laying between low laying hills. The whole area was littered with beer cans and bottles. She did a double take as she saw a rusted-out beer keg lying on its side, full of bullet holes.
“Something tells me our escorts have been here before,” Derek said as he pulled the truck to a stop and watched as Josh hopped out of his ATV and ran back to them.
“We’ll camp here, and put the camo nets over the rigs,” Josh shouted up to Derek through his open window. The truck was so high off the ground, Denise couldn’t even see the man.
Derek killed the engine. “I’ll help.”
“Much appreciated, sir,” Denise heard Josh reply.
“You stay put, Ms. Denise; we’ll get that lawn chair set up for you in a jiffy.”
Denise turned to her husband as Josh’s head appeared over the front hood, walking towards one of the ATVs’ trailers where his brother was already pulling a bundle off the trailer.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about. They’re sweet.”
Derek cracked his door and had one foot down on the top rung of the chrome ladder it took to get into The Mudder.
“They’re scared shitless of Brittany, is what they are.” He smiled.
Later that day, a little before noon, they’d eaten. Barbecued steaks and some salads packed by Beth Ballard had been much better fare than either of them had expected on this trip. The Carlisle boys, though, looked like they were quite familiar with living out of backpacks and ice chests. The propane-fired grill had been one of the first things they unloaded.
Whatever concerns she’d had about the brothers was quickly going by the wayside. She could even tell Derek was starting to loosen up around them.
“Did you take your pro-natal vitamin, Miss Denise?”
Josh was looking at her in genuine concern.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “I did; thank you for reminding me.”
“Miss Brittany was dead serious,” he added. “I quote—‘She so much as misses one of her pro-natal vitamins, I will hunt you both down and end you,’ end quote.”
Danny picked a piece of gristle off his plate and threw it at his brother. “Pre-natal, dumbass.”
“Whatever they’re called.”
They all had a good laugh at Josh’s expense.
“How is it you two aren’t married?” she asked.
“Been there and done that,” Danny answered. “I was married for six whole weeks. My wife got out, before I kicked her out.”
“What he’s trying not to say,” Josh explained with a huge grin. “. . . is that she dropped him for a one-eyed bronc rider from Calgary.”
“He had two eyes.”
“Dude, it doesn’t count when he can take one out and juggle with it.” Josh turned to them in explanation. “It was a glass eye.”
“I was pretty torn up about it, too.” Danny took his hat off in mock solemnness and stared down at it for half a second before peeking up at all of them, grinning from ear to ear. “For about two hours.”
“What about you, Josh?” Derek asked.
Josh just shook his head.
“What he won’t say,” Danny explained, “is his former fiancée, former as in she dumped his sorry ass, lived outside Scottsbluff. It’s why we went down there. See if we could get her and her family out. Grant came with us. We barely got out ourselves.”
“What happened down there?” Derek went forward on one knee and grabbed another bottle of water from the ice chest. “We didn’t hear any news about anything big happening out this way.”
Josh snorted in laughter. “Why would you? We’re flyover and drive-past country. It doesn’t get the play time like what happened in Boston, but it was pretty much the same thing. The Feds came in and just took over some big cattle operations, feedlots, big ones. The kind with their own railroad spurs. The kind that feeds a lot of people.”
“The kind that had owners,” Danny added. “They pushed back hard. Most of those spreads have been family operations going back four, sometimes five generations.”
“And the Army did its own pushing?” Denise knew how it went. It had happened in more places than they would ever know. The stories never made the “approved” news feeds.
“Eventually.” Danny nodded. “It started with just the ISS, working with the National Guard. Then some of the guard units figured out they were on the wrong side, and the real Army was called in. The Nebraska Guard had a lot of help from people like us, but the Army had the Air Force on their side. The actual fighting only lasted a couple of days.”
Danny drew a big circle in the air in front of him. “They put up a . . .”
“Security cordon,” Josh interjected. “Emily’s family was inside Scottsbluff. When the town surrendered, they started bussing folks south. New Mexico, we figure. That’s what the rumors were.”
“We haven’t had any word since,” Danny finished for his brother.
“Doesn’t matter.” Josh offered a weak smile. “Shit for brains is right; she had dumped my ass.”
“I can’t believe I used to be part of that.” Denise knew she had never been part of the real Army. Beyond basic training, which had been a hard requirement, and a truncated OCS course, her computer hacking duties for TF Chrome hadn’t exactly been a part of “big Army.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Miss Denise.” Josh waggled a finger at her. “Lots of them Army troops wouldn’t fight, either; they were put on buses, too. They felt the same way.”
“Still . . .” Derek was shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe any of them would go that far.”
“Not to us,” Danny said. “The Feds and rich people on both coasts have had it in for us since our daddy’s time; even before, according to our grandpop. We might as well live on a different planet from those folks.”
“And now, maybe we will.” Josh laughed. “He’ll probably try to get out of his grave and come with.”
Denise had the same thought as Josh. “Speaking of which, we on schedule?”
Danny nodded. “Yes, ma’am, tonight is going to be a bear. We’ll catch a few winks here, but we won’t wait for dark to get going. We drive all night, I figure by sunup tomorrow, we’ll be across Wyoming and at the crossing into Idaho at Alpine. We’ll ditch the ATVs, switch plates on the truck, and pile into that.
It’ll be tight, but we should be able to use roads after that.”
“That going to be safe?” Derek asked.
“We know the ISS offices don’t trust the local law they don’t directly control,” Danny answered. “They don’t share shit unless they want something. As long as we don’t run into an ISS patrol or a guard unit, we should be alright. Point is, we know how to get across Wyoming without seeing another soul. Idaho, not so much.”
“I thought you said this bridge wasn’t used that much?” Josh whispered to his brother.
“I said it wasn’t a main road,” Danny fired back. “I didn’t think it’d have a freaking National Guard roadblock.”
“Guys.” Derek had changed his opinion of the Carlisle brothers over the last three days. He realized he trusted them. He even had a degree of confidence in their abilities that he couldn’t have fathomed when they’d set out from the Ballard ranch three days earlier. That said, their constant bickering with each other had grown old two and a half days ago.
“It doesn’t matter. They’re there. We find another route, or come up with an idea for a diversion that pulls them off the bridge.”
“Why don’t I go steal a grain truck?” Josh suggested. “I could drive right through them; you guys follow in the “Mudder.”
“Because they’d just radio ahead,” Derek explained, “and pass along our description and route of travel.”
“Yeah, we’d have a helicopter up our ass in no time,” Danny agreed.
“I meant what I said.” Josh was shaking his head. “I drive right through ’em, ain’t nobody gonna get on the radio.”
Derek could see from the look on Danny’s face, the older Carlisle thought his brother’s idea had some merit.
He just shook his head as firmly as he could. “No.”
He gestured for the binoculars hanging from Josh’s neck. “Let me have a look.”
There were eight Idaho Guardsmen, two of them looking to be women, in the middle of the narrow two-lane bridge crossing the Snake River on what he now knew to be Archer Highway. They were in farm country somewhere northeast of Idaho Falls. Forested mountains stood out in the distance across the northern horizon. That was where they needed to go.
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 9
