Dark New World (Book 3): EMP Deadfall (31 page)

The captain made a motion with his hand, extending it and lowering it, and the two shooters lowered their rifles. “What’s your point, miss? Make it quick.” There was no sympathy in his voice.

“When I got set free, one of them helped me. He risked a lot.
I know his voice
. This is the one who freed me. He’s telling the truth, dammit, so you can’t just shoot him. He’s on our side, he’s been helping us for God’s sake!” Jaz was frantic.

The captain glanced at Choony, then back at Jaz. “Well, this is a new development… Very well. Marines, get that man over here for interrogation. For the other prisoner, you have your orders.”

The captain turned away from the scene and strode toward the main encampment, and if he flinched when the execution squad fired, Choony didn’t see it.

Choony muttered a mantra for the dead man, the best he could do for him, and wobbled uncertainly toward the remaining prisoner, who was being tethered to a tree. He doubted this captain would use much restraint during “questioning.”

Unable to see properly, he wondered if this was the man who had handed him a flashlight when he tried to raid the storeroom in the total dark. The man who asked to be knocked out so he could return safely to the farm and help other Clanners. Choony couldn’t remember clearly. His mind felt detached but he had to look closer, to find out, to… he wasn’t sure, couldn’t think, and then he felt himself caught by one of the Marines. He must have wobbled too much, he thought, as the Marine lowered him gently to the grass and stepped back, murmuring, “You have to take it easy, sir. You’re hurt. Moving around ain’t good, it can hurt you more.” Choony blinked again. He had to stop this drifting, he thought, as Jaz sat down and held his arm to steady him. He had to be here. Had to be present, not drifting somewhere, and he wondered if it was getting dark early today or if he was just passing out.

- 16 -

1830 HOURS - ZERO DAY +31

ETHAN CONFIGURED THE file and re-encrypted it. He’d added multiple bits of intel that had been filtering in lately online via HAMnet and from Watcher One, whom Ethan was now positive was a member of the 20s and probably his handler. While the encryption program ran, Ethan gazed at the maps on the bunker wall next to his workstation. Large yellow circles now showed confirmed EMP-blacked-out areas, which covered virtually all of America, Canada, northern Mexico, and the North Atlantic. Hawaii was also blacked out, which was new information but not unexpected.

Red pins with flags showed different invader unit headquarters. Pink pins showed suspected units. These pins were thick throughout the eastern seaboard, the west coast, and southern Alaska. Hawaii, too. But, there were also now a lot of blue pins of different shades, representing known U.S. military and partisan units. Every day it seemed he had to add more blue pins, and remove a red or pink pin or two.

That sounded promising, but Ethan, an expert at online military games, knew better—the invader troop movements showed they were reacting to American units effectively, and if they hadn’t crushed resistance by midwinter they surely would when spring rolled around. There were too many, and they operated in a well-coordinated way. The Americans, unfortunately, relied at least in part on Ethan’s intel, and disseminating that information took a long time. Much of it was passed on by word of mouth to units without HAMnet access—which came to at least half of ’em.

Ethan kept his spirits up by thinking about Operation Backdraft though. The details were hazy, but he’d pieced together enough to know that it would totally screw up the bastards’ communications net, and therefore, their ability to coordinate their efforts or react quickly to new threats. It would be a game changer, if it happened as planned. D-day hadn’t been announced, but the chatter he’d intercepted from Colorado Springs suggested it could happen at any time. Which was awesome, but it made waiting a difficult exercise in frustration and patience.

Amber’s voice snapped him out of his musings. “Your computer is almost done. Can you click on the thing before it makes that damn dinging noise when it finishes?”

Ethan turned and saw her leaning over his chair to peer at the computer to his left. She was right, of course; she’d seen the cycle before. There wasn’t much to do down here beyond going through his intel notes for the Nth time. When not working, all he could think about was how hard he was falling for Amber, though he kept his mouth shut about his feelings. It was neither the time nor the place. Time enough for emotional vulnerability later, when and if this whole Peter nightmare ended. First, they had to survive the crisis at hand.

Ethan went to the terminal to wait for it to finish compiling, with his hand on the mouse. “A lot of great intel going out to the Resistance today. The guys in Virginia were almost surrounded, but I found them an exit route to West Virginia. They can hide among the partisan camps in the Appalachians through winter at the very least. I had almost written them off.”

Amber frowned. “Wouldn’t the ’vaders know they left a hole open? Could it be a trap?”

Ethan let out a long, frustrated breath. “Of course it could. But if our people don’t take the chance, they won’t be around to see winter anyway. I’ve been having partisans in Maryland step up guerrilla raids, so the ’vaders are sending some of their Virginia units up there in response. They can’t draw troops out of the cities, at least not yet—they’re barely hanging on in the big cities as civilian survivors and partisans get more desperate and violent. So there’s at least a chance it isn’t a trap. They’ll have to move at night to avoid all those damn helicopter patrols down there, but most of them have a good shot at making it through. As soon as ’vader reinforcements start to arrive, I’ll warn the Maryland partisans to fade away again.”

Amber nodded in approval. She’d learned basic tactics fast, and Ethan had been keeping her briefed as things developed on the ground out there. She’d been a very quick study though she was still learning the fine art of guerrilla strategy. Still, she had learned enough to be dangerous to the ’vaders in her own right if the two of them ever got the hell out of the stupid bunker. Ethan’s successes against the ’vaders had built his confidence. Real-world results proved how sharp his sense of strategy and on-the-spot tactics had become. And Amber’s recommendations showed she was catching up fast.

Ethan sighed. “I can’t wait to see daylight again,” he said, his brow furrowed. “It’s getting to be an overpowering urge, and twice I’ve barely stopped myself from leaving. The last time, I had my hand on the locking wheel before I talked myself out of it.” He put another red pin up on the map, showing a new ’vader field HQ.

Amber frowned. “Yeah… Well, we’ll both go nuts from cabin fever pretty soon, and that’ll put you at risk of making mistakes and hasty decisions. We have to figure something out soon.” She wrung her hands as she spoke, lips pursed in frustration. Clearly, she felt the same way he did.

“I’ve been working on that. Supposedly there’s a Marine Reserves company still operational, originally based out of Harrisburg. I’ve sent word to them to head this way to help deal with Peter’s group and set us free. Harrisburg was a total loss to the ’vaders anyway, so the company was already on the run. They might as well have something useful to do besides dodge and hide.”

“You sent them this way, instead of west toward Gettysburg? But I thought those Michaux Militia folks and the ’vaders in Gettysburg were stalemated? Can you imagine what a whole company of Marines could do for us down there? It could open up the entire front.”

Ethan put his hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “I know, Amber. I know. Not that there’s really a ‘front.’ But the Michaux Militia can always retreat into their National Forest if they get overrun. If I can’t send them the intel they need to be effective, though, they’ll be overrun anyway. It was a tough decision with no right choice—just the least wrong one, I hope. The good they can do here is real and immediate, and not just for you and me.” God, he hoped he was right.

The computer beeped, loud and annoying. Ethan made an apologetic grimace and Amber rolled her eyes. Their conversation had distracted them both. He grinned at her and turned to the terminal, where he prepared to send out the day’s batch of messages. It took only a minute to get everything set up. Then he hit “Enter” on the keyboard and waited. The damn hourglass came up, of course. No surprise. But then it kept going. And going.

“What the hell?” he muttered, and pulled up a diagnostic routine he’d coded during their copious free time. It took only seconds to find the problem. “It’s not connecting to the main relay antenna. I can’t send out the HAMnet.”

Amber smirked and said, “Isn’t it just a fancy HAM radio? You need a
main
antenna? What about the little whippy antenna you see on trucks, don’t you have one of those?”

Ethan shook his head. “This isn’t some trucker CB. I need a real antenna, with enough power to reach dozens of other relays all over the region—other people who disseminate the intel I send, even though they can’t make sense of the message. But they know it’s important. If I can’t get the message to them, they can’t rebroadcast it.”

Amber nodded. She knew how important Ethan’s broadcasts had become. But then her jaw dropped, and the color went out of her face. She put a hand on the table to steady herself, and then sat down abruptly. “Ethan, you sonofabitch, don’t you
dare
go out there to fix this thing. There has to be another way. If they catch you, you won’t be able to send the message anyway, right? Think about this. Please, they might be waiting for you there!” She snapped her jaw shut, realizing she had started to sound desperate.

Ethan gave her a smile, mostly to show he appreciated her caring about him. For some reason, she seemed to be getting mad at that, so he dropped his confident smile. Anyway, he felt no real confidence. He just knew he’d have to “bravo it up” to get her to go along with the plan, and he’d need her to help if he wanted to get it done. Whatever was wrong with the antenna, he’d need her to look up the checklist and run him through it while he was out in the field, looking for damage or failures. If he even made it to the makeshift tower alive in the first place, that is. He had no illusion that a skill at strategy would translate into success in an action like that.

“I’ll be careful. We have cameras everywhere. I’ll need you on the radio, both to run me through the checklist to fix the antenna and to keep an eye on all our cameras and get me safely through the maze of assholes with guns. This is going to happen, because it has to. Amber, I’m going out there, and I am going to fix it. But it doesn’t have to be Mission Impossible. Help me, and it’ll be easy as raiding Blackburrow with a fiftieth-level Shaman.”

That got the reaction he wanted. Despite her inner turmoil, she snorted back a laugh and then let out a long sigh. She always thought his online gaming references were funny, not to mention adorable. “Fine, you win. Just wait until it gets dark if you want me to get involved. It’ll hinder them, and the cameras see just fine at night. Tell me what you need me to do so you can get back in here with me to keep doing your 20s magic.”

Ethan immediately saw the irony of the situation. Before, he could barely get a moment with her as Frank was a constant wedge between them. Now they had all the time in the world together, and of course something else had replaced Frank as that wedge.

Ethan said, “Sounds good to me. Let’s ‘get ’r done,’ shall we?” He pulled up four PDF documents on the computer and squared his shoulders. “Alright, let’s go through these while we wait. They’re manuals on the principles and operation of HAMnet broadband. They show how I connected our routers to the bigger network out there.”

* * *

1900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +31

Taggart looked at his scout, one eyebrow raised, as he considered the man’s report. “So we found another entrance to the tunnel segment they encamped in? That’s excellent. We’ll have to keep eyes on them, soldier. Send two scouts ahead to make that happen. It’s imperative that Black’s forces do not become aware of our presence though. When the trap springs, I want them caught flatfooted.”

* * *

2200 HOURS - ZERO DAY +31

Ethan waited at the entrance of the bunker, listening through his earbud to the radio as Amber kept him updated on his surroundings. “Okay, the last guard is passing you right now. In ten seconds you can sneak out and go north for twenty yards. That’ll put you in the north food forest. Good cover there.”

Ethan acknowledged, and then slowly counted. At ten, he pushed gently on the wooden wall of the escape hatch, swinging it upward. The hatch was really a wooden box with a mass of vines growing over it, carefully trimmed to let it swing open but still look like the bramble bushes that grew randomly all over the farm when it was down. He crawled out and swung the hatch shut again, restoring the illusion.

“You have ten seconds before the next guard comes around the corner. Get moving!” Amber said through Ethan’s earbud. Perfect; he’d only need about four seconds to make it to the woods, even loaded down with tools and such.

Half crouched, Ethan jogged to the edge of the woods, holding his gear close to keep it as quiet as possible. Then he slowed to a walk and disappeared into the food forest and out of Amber’s direct view until he got to the hilltop paddock beyond. “I made it to cover,” he said simply.

He focused next on crossing the woods in the dark without setting off any Clan trap. The White Stag people hadn’t bothered to risk finding and disarming them, so many traps were still in place, waiting for an enemy. He knew where they all were, in theory, but in the dark, things looked different. It was slow going. He’d move a couple steps, then stop to reexamine his surroundings, comparing small visible details to his memory of trap locations. “Rinse and repeat,” Ethan muttered as he struggled to keep his attention on the task at hand. That had always been a challenge for him, but the terror of being seen and shot, or stepping into a trap, or falling over roots while his tools clattered to the enemy, helped to keep him focused. Mostly. After what felt like forever, he looked up and, to his surprise, found himself almost at the tree line. He looked at his watch and cursed—it had taken nearly twenty minutes to cross the roughly one hundred yard span of the north food forest. He was already badly off schedule.