by J. F. Holmes
The master mechanic had seen damaged birds before and, as he looked around at the burning airfield, knew that this had to get fixed, right damned now. They were going to need air support, because only a fool couldn’t see that this was just the beginning.
“Get that into the maintenance hangar, NOW! Before you do, I want it sprayed down with fresh water, not seawater, and get all that chemical shit off of it.” His team, hastily awakened from their sleep, just gawked at him. “You, you, and you,” he barked, pointing fingers, “start uncrating a spare turbine. You, Sergeant Payne, get a team together to cut the damaged engine off. I want in done in less than hour, and I want this ship operational in two. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STANDING THERE FOR?” he finished, and watched them scatter. They would do it, he knew, or die of exhaustion trying.
Chapter 18
Gate Crash plus five minutes
Chaos had erupted in the ACECOM headquarters. Landlines were ringing off the hook less than three minutes after General Halstead had taken his call from Gate Control.
“Give me a SITREP,” said the general, striding into the room.
“ATTENTION!” yelled a young captain, and Halstead waved him away.
“Give me a SITREP, Pete,” he said, watching explosions on the large screen that dominated the room.
“Mortar attack on the airfield, plus reports of surface-to-air fire at inbound flights,” said the Canadian.
“DEFCON One, lock the city down, no one in or out. I want a QRF on standby; find out the point of origin of the mortars.” A thoughtful look was on Halstead’s face, not showing the incredible strain he was under.
“Pretty ballsy for a terrorist attack, and we can just replace them in a week or two,” said Sergeant Major Olsen, who’d just stepped in the room. Unlike Halstead, who had an apartment in the city, he maintained quarters on base. “Looks like they hit the fuel dump, too,” he said, looking at the feed from the camera at the field.
“It’s not a terrorist attack,” answered his friend quietly. In a louder voice he said, “I need to see you, the XO, and the staff primaries in two minutes in the Skiff, with an initial assessment of the damage.”
Olsen raised an eyebrow at that, but Halstead just shook his head and motioned to the secure briefing room. The NCO followed him in, and they waited for the staff to arrive. Both had learned long ago to wait for events to develop, or to act immediately when necessary, but not to just do something for the sake of doing something. They took their seats at the head of the table, and each of the staff heads filed into the room.
“Two, give me a summary of the attack on the airfield,” began Halstead.
The Regiment Intelligence officer, a no-nonsense major, looked at some notes scribbled on a pad. “Not much, Sir. Mortar attack, from what we can tell. That’s about it. They’re pulling the data from the airfield radar now, but that probably isn’t going to get us anything. We lost everything, but we can get spares from Earth easy enough. We’ll be back up in two, three days, except for the Hercs. Those have to be assembled; that’ll take a month.”
Halstead kept his face blank; he knew replacements wouldn’t be coming soon, if ever. They’d been hurt, severely.
“LTC Ibson,” said Elmhoff to the infantry battalion commander whose unit was currently on rotation for city security, “have your men check the dump for a launch site. Whoever they are, they’re long gone, though.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” said the general. He drew in a deep breath and said, “I have something much more important that we have to discuss, but probably related. About ten—no, twelve minutes ago, I was in a Skype call with the CJS. It dropped, which isn’t unusual. I was waiting for the reconnect when I received a call from Gate Control. It was a Ragnarök event.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Sergeant Major Olsen. Besides Halstead, he was the only one in the room who knew what that meant, but the others could guess. A murmur ran up and down the table, and the G-4, Major Brune, nodded her head.
“So that’s why they were shoving so much shit through the gate.”
“Yeah, they expected something to happen, but not this quick,” said her commander. “If we received a Ragnarök signal, we were to assume that hostilities had broken out between the US and China. In addition to the signal, before the Gate shut down, there was an extreme heat signature and detectors registered an intense burst of radiation.”
“They nuked it?” said Major Allison. The man was in charge of information operations, and Halstead had always suspected he’d been shuffled off to Alpha Centauri to deal with a really bad case of PTSD, and was suffering miserably without his family.
“Now calm down, Joe,” said Major Tongas, “we don’t know what happened.”
“They nuked the base. My kids! My family…!” Before anyone could move, Allison drew his pistol, cocked the hammer back, shoved it up under his chin, and fired. The wall was splattered with blood, and he fell over backward, legs kicking. There was a stunned silence, and the major could be heard choking and wheezing on blood for several seconds, then his breath rattled and stopped.
“Holy shit!” said the man next to him, who hadn’t moved. It had happened so fast, everyone was still in their seats.
Only Olsen moved, crouching down and looking for a pulse. There was none, of course. He stepped over the body and opened the door, calling for a medical team. When they’d carried the dead man out, he said, “There’s going to be a lot of that.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Major Tongas. “What does this mean, General?”
“It means, for now, we’re cut off from Earth. Our air wing was attacked at the same time as hostilities erupted; it’s not a coincidence. Pete,” he said to his chief of staff, “I don’t like this, but I want every soldier and civilian of East Asian decent put in internment; the stadium will do. I’ll talk to them tonight.”
“Isn’t that something Governor Conklin is going to have to sign off on?” asked the judge advocate.
“I already spoke to him, and he’s good with it. The cops will handle the civilians, but I want armed MPs to handle the soldiers. If there are any Chinese operators in our ranks, they’re going to be well-trained and deadly.”
“Got it,” said Elmhoff, taking notes.
“Mike, what do we have as far as the Gvit?”
“There’s a scout team from 1-9 out on the ridge, left a couple of days early to do some training.”
Halstead turned to look at the map behind him, staring at it thoughtfully. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem; the natives aren’t tied into our society, so I doubt they’ll understand the issues we’re having. Still, though, Major Tongas, draw a plan to reinforce Rorke’s Drift with at least a company of infantry and a platoon of tanks, put scouts out across the bridge, and give Firebase Glory whatever extra artillery rounds we might have lying around. Pull 1-9 off leave rotation and bump them onto training cycle, and put 3-9 on alert. Now, I have meeting with Governor Conklin. You know what to do, people.”
Before they broke to perform the tasks he’d assigned them, Halstead held up his hand. “One more thing. This is a Gate closure; it’s happened before.” He motioned over to the blood stains. “Until we get things sorted out, events Earthside are just a rumor and a disinformation campaign spread by whomever attacked the airfield. The Gate will be back up by next week. We don’t need seventy thousand civilians going crazy. Understood?”
They muttered their assent and stood as he did. It was surreal, almost. Blood on the wall and soaking into the carpet, the smell of copper and cordite still lingering. Yet, he’d just asked them to go about their jobs, and they’d stepped to it. Maybe it hadn’t hit them yet; after all, the Gate had gone down before.
Halstead walked out of base HQ, accompanied by SGM Olsen and his two Chak bodyguards. Normally they did whatever Chak do when they’re off duty, but somehow they’d showed up, unasked, five minutes earlier. Both were clad in the black steel and Kevlar armor that the smaller, less intelligent cousins
to the Gvit had adopted. American flags were painted in green and black on their chest plates, and both carried adapted M-240 machine guns as their personal weapons. Smaller than the Gvit, but not by much, they still topped out at roughly eight feet, but lacked the natural armored hide the Gvit had. Slaves on the other side of the river, free on American soil.
Olsen looked at the two of them, whom he privately called Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, and then thumbed his finger at the Humvee. They each sat down on the open bed, making the truck’s shocks groan, and the two humans climbed in.
Chapter 19
Territorial Administration Building, Gate Crash plus thirty minutes.
Governor Conklin’s office was at the other end of the hundred-meter causeway that connected the mainland to Seaside. They made the trip in less than two minutes, even as the fires died down at the airbase on the far end of the island. Armed guards challenged them at the entrance to the government building, a simple two-story concrete and glass structure.
They were met by one of the governor’s bodyguards, a private military contractor whom they both knew from active duty. He said little, just opened the door to the conference room. Inside were half a dozen people, representing the interests of the various factions at the colony. There were three separate arguments going on, but the room stilled when the two soldiers walked in.
“Give us the good news first, David,” said Governor Conklin. To his right sat Doctor Fitzpatrick, the Gvit expert, but Halstead didn’t see why she needed to be sitting so close to the man who was, effectively, the leader of humanity right now. Then he saw how close they were sitting, and, well, it was really none of his business.
On Conklin’s left sat a man Halstead both admired and couldn’t stand, Mitch Verdao. The foreman of mineral production—including oil, uranium, and rare earth materials—held a lot of power, and he was about to be handed more. He was a bruiser of man, and Halstead suspected he had ties back to organized crime on Earth. Well, not anymore. The general leaned over as he sat down at the table and whispered, “If that asshole starts anything, I want you to take him out.” Olsen said nothing, just nodded.
It had been, total, an hour since the Gate crash and the attack on the airfield. Before he spoke, Halstead checked his tablet and saw an updated damage estimate report from the Aviation S-3. He swore under his breath and exchanged a look with Alice Ayodele. The brilliant Kenyan had a troubled look in her eye, and slowly shook her head. The Gate was her baby; she’d been one of the physicists who’d first created it.
Conklin himself was calm. He’d come up through the oil fields to become a VP at one of the giant petrochemical conglomerates, specifically the one that had won the drilling contract for Alpha Centauri. Halstead respected the man; not only did he know the industry inside and out, he was good with people. If this was what he thought it was, Governor Conklin was the man he’d want at the helm.
The last man had a nickname that SGM Olsen had given him. ‘Wormtongue’, after the fictional Tolkien character in The Lord of the Rings. He was a political operative, to the core, and had absolutely no sense of right or wrong, only numbers and polls. The shitty thing was, he was good at his job. Lloyd Bennet knew every trick in the book, and he’d been sent here to prep for the secretary of state’s visit. He was an old hand at Alpha Centauri, parlaying his “success” with the supposed Gvit “treaty” into this position, but Halstead wanted to walk him across the bridge and into enemy territory. Just to watch.
“Can I shoot him first?” Olsen whispered back, nodding to Bennet.
“Of course,” muttered Halstead, but then the two men sat down in the remaining chairs.
The last man entered behind them and sat down abruptly. Chief O’Brian looked like he’d been run over by the proverbial bus; Halstead almost felt sorry for him. When the Gate had malfunctioned twice before, panic had swept the streets, and the Seaside police chief had had his work cut out for him. They would need to talk later.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” said Conklin. One of the reasons the general liked him, no bullshit. “Each of you give me your reports; David, you first. What’s the deal with the airfield, and how does this tie into the Gate malfunction?”
“Aircraft loss is almost total. Instead of telling you what we lost, I’ll tell you what we have. A Blackhawk that took a really hard landing, and a CH-47 with a completely destroyed turbine and broken rear rotor blades.”
Verdano interrupted him, a pissed-off look on his face. “That’s really going to cut into rare earth production, and how am I going to get my people back and forth to the mines and the oil platforms? You know what our priorities are. Production can’t stop.”
Halstead waited, letting the silence grow. Instead of answering the mining manager, he continued, “We lost—” he started to say, but again the man interrupted him.
“I’ve got people depending on these shipments back on Earth. You need to fix those helos and planes and figure out a way to get our stuff moving.”
Olsen started to get up, but Halstead put his hand on his arm. “Mr. Verdano, I’m not sure you’re aware of how the situation has changed. I’ll let Doctor Ayodele fill you in when it’s her turn to brief. Otherwise, Sergeant Major Olsen is going to get out of his chair and beat the shit out of you.” He said it flatly, but looked straight at the man.
“Are you threatening me?” asked Verdano. He was no stranger to violence, but a slowly dawning perception that maybe the facts had changed was sinking in.
“No, stating a fact.” Halstead dismissed him from his mind and turned back to Conklin. “Skylark Two was on approach to the runway when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. The airframe and the crew were a total loss. The Blackhawk managed to evade another missile, but they crash landed.”
“How many people?” asked Conklin. Another reason Halstead liked him.
“Five on the Herc, two on the UH-60, and one on the ground, a firefighter.”
Conklin closed his eyes for a moment, then simply said, “How does that effect our security situation?”
“I think we’re good for now. We gave the Gvit a really hard pounding last year at the Battle of the Bridge. They’ve been quiet, but I’ve ordered more surveillance, and we have a plan to reinforce Rorke’s Drift.”
“And the terrorists?”
“Sir, due to the timing of the attack, and in conjunction with other indications, my intelligence staff believes it was a PLA Special Forces sleeper unit. As we discussed, I’ve ordered the detainment of all persons of recent Asian descent on Alpha Centauri.”
“Yeah, that’s going to go over like a fuckin’ fart in church,” said the cop next to him. The former NYPD officer continued, “We had to break a few heads, and some scooted for the causeway. We should have all of Chinatown cleared by this afternoon.”
“Treat them well, Chief; they’re Americans, after all,” said Conklin. “Whoever did this probably went to ground. Am I right, General?”
“Maybe, though I don’t know where they’d go. The Chinese Gate is twelve thousand miles away, on the far side of the planet.”
“So you think we have a problem?”
Halstead shrugged. “I don’t know, but CID will do their damndest to figure it out. Meanwhile, we’re upping security across the board.”
“You should have done that before the chinks shot down the aircraft!” said Verdano.
Halstead looked over at Olsen, who got up, walked around the table, drew an ancient Colt .45, and held the barrel pointed at the oilman’s head. Verdano had been on the wrong end of a gun before, in fact both ends, and he just stared back.
“We’ve got bigger problems than that, you jumped-up mafioso,” said Olsen. “You better start worrying about how you’re going to work to help this place survive.”
“Sergeant Major, please sit down. Mr. Verdano, I think once you hear Doctor Ayodele’s report, you’ll understand,” said Governor Conklin. Olsen looked over at Halstead, who nodded. He holstered the pistol, came back around t
he table, and sat down, eyeing the miner, who stared back.
“Doctor?” said Conklin, and the Nigerian took a deep breath, then steadied herself.
“I believe, based on sensor data and other information, that there has been a nuclear incident on Earth. I can’t say of what magnitude, but we recorded enough to know that the Gate facility Earthside was hit with a large weapon, probably in the three to four megaton range.”
There was silence in the room until Bennet said, “How long until it reopens? It’s going to be hard to keep this from getting out to the people. That’s going to make the secretary of state’s visit difficult to poll.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” said Olsen. “She means the Gate is GONE.”
Bennet paled, but finally said, “So are we talking a few weeks until they build another one?”
“We can’t speculate about anything,” said Halstead, “but as Governor Conklin knows, we received a Ragnarök notification. That means general cyber and nuclear hostilities have started between the United States and other superpowers. Most probably China, based on what’s happened here. Our personnel and equipment, if the war goes the way everyone thinks it might, could be the largest combat force on the planet when we reopen the Gate. They were hitting us to prevent that.”
“No, please, you don’t understand, gentlemen. The Gate is gone,” said Doctor Ayodele in a weak voice. “Even if they can restart it, the Gate facility will be highly radioactive. It cannot be used, maybe not for several hundred years. Even if they rebuild it, the connections may be thousands of miles from here.”
“But,” said Doctor Fitzpatrick, speaking for the first time, “what about the other portals? The other Gates? There are eleven, I believe.”
“Yes, but ours was the biggest, and primary. The cyber-attack was probably meant to attempt to control it, and when that failed…”
