Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) (12 page)

Scott met and talked with the CO, a Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Morrow, and after a reasonable time took his leave. Hardwick had vanished while this was going on, but as Scott exited the marine area, Hardwick reappeared and pointed silently down an adjacent companionway. A five-minute walk brought them to a combat vehicle service area, and way in the back, they found the senior NCO poker game in progress. There was one seat open, and Scott took it.

“House rules and ante?” he asked, pulling the seat closer to the table. There was no need for introductions, since he knew each and every person around the table.

“Good. Fresh blood,” Sergeant Mack observed.

“Looks fat,” Sergeant Rives commented. He wasn’t talking about weight.

“Lambs to the slaughter,” Scott commented, rubbing his hands together.

“Watch this one, I think he cheats,” Pam Brock said in a stage whisper that could be heard across a parade ground.

“I do not!” Scott retorted indignantly. “It’s just that you lot are such rotten players.” The rude comments that came back gave him a warm feeling, and he knew they still accepted him into the small, intimate circle without reservation. They played for three hours before Scott dropped out, and since he was losing, they weren’t too upset.

“See you soon, Admiral,” Pam said, speaking for them all. Scott waved and took off, pretending not to see CPO Hardwick deposit a bottle of whisky on the table.

“Don’t drink it all at once, boys and girls,” Hardwick said.

“Thanks Chief, look after the skipper for us.”

“I will that, take my word for it.” Together, they wandered about the ship, no particular place in mind, or direction.

All in all the
New Zealand
had come through her first battle in fair shape, considering the pounding she’d taken. Yet sadly, Scott knew she wouldn’t be able to stand up to a first-rate ship of the line. They had to have something a lot tougher and meaner. How they would build something like that with their present understanding of the available technology he didn’t know, just that they’d have to find a way. Devon Hawking was a genius when it came to shipbuilding, but as even he said, you can’t build a railroad until its railroad-building time. What was out there that they missed, or didn’t know about, that was the question. In three hundred-odd years, you’d think they would have come up with some startling new inventions, yet sad to say, he’d seen nothing of the kind. Mostly it was improvements on things he knew. Then again, the rifle didn’t change for almost three hundred years during one period, so maybe he was expecting too much of these people.

The old HMS Vindicator was a classic example of a ship ahead of its time, a ship so intimidating nothing could stand against it. Not in armor, weapons or training. The Blackbird SR71, the original, was another example, as was the DC3, and that was near indestructible and remained in service long after it was supposed to retire. They needed the same kind of thinking that had produced those and other aircraft, and the technology to make them the enemy’s worst nightmare. Nonetheless, no ship, no matter how powerful, was indestructible, especially against a fleet. How would the
Vindicator
have stood up to a combined fleet action? Look what happened to HMS
Hood
. Why they sent what was essentially a battle cruiser against a pocket battleship never did make sense to him. That meant they had to have a fleet of
‘Vindicators
’, each protecting the other. Warfare had changed since her day, and with good communications, air cover, multi-targeting warheads, and really massive nuclear, or antimatter weapons, Earth’s new fleet of warships would have to be built tough enough to withstand the onslaught and continue giving out better than she received. A tall order, yet a goal that must be aimed for. Scott sat looking into the distance, weighing his options. They needed a game changer.

Rather than sit in his cabin, he went on a tour of the ship as it limped back to the shipyards for repair and refit. His first call was to the sick bay, and after checking in with the doctor and medic on duty, he visited the injured men and women who were awake and able to talk. He put on a brave face, talking to each and reassuring them that they’d be hale and hearty again very soon. If that little mad doctor, Kessler, was telling him the truth, there would be no one walking around with missing limbs, or disfiguring scars. It was a comfort in a way, but it didn’t mitigate the losses they’d suffered. Even at a rough tally in his head, he estimated they’d lost several thousand men and women in this engagement. Even Kessler couldn’t bring back the dead. In war, men and women died, and that was a fact. It meant that they needed to build stronger ships, thicker shields and more powerful main armament. That was a tall order with what he had to work with, and yet, there had to be engineers, scientists, and technicians in this world he could use; they just had to find them and put them to work.

That brought up another possibility. So far, none of his people had had a good look at this world in which they lived. What if somewhere out there, someone had come up with a new way to do something like this? They might not see it as a weapon, but even a sheet of paper could be turned into a lethal instrument if you knew how to use it. While he walked, Scott made a mental checklist of things they had to do immediately.

The sad truth was, they couldn’t go on for long fighting the aliens this way. So far they hadn’t seen their really big guns. Scott remembered a paper written by Major General Orde Charles Wingate, one of his heroes from the Second World War. Wingate proposed setting up a deep penetration group to cut the enemy supply lines. Once the supplies stopped coming, either the rear, or front commander would order a small, lightly armed group to go and investigate the holdup. Of course they were ambushed, so never reported back. Now the enemy commander had a choice to make, and rather than send back frontline troops, weakening his line, he’d order rear-echelon soldiers to move forward to find out what the problem was, and take care of it. This proved true in Burma, but it wasn’t until his supply of food, fuel, and ammo started to get short that the commander would send back frontline troops to destroy whoever was interrupting his supply line. This wasn’t an easy choice to make, since with reduced supplies, and weakening of his front line, the commander risked the tide of war turning against him.

The one assumption Scott had to make, based on the evidence he’d seen so far, was that these aliens were in a war somewhere. Why they were taking children and young people remained a mystery. Slave labor for their mines and shipyards? Whatever the reason, they needed a constant supply of slaves, and children and young people were easier to train once subjugated and cowed. Scott could see the same analogy working here. So far the aliens had only sent rear-echelon ships back to sort out the pesky humans, and even a quick analysis of the alien ships showed that many of them had prior battle damage, patched-up hulls sent out to do small cleanup work. That hadn’t worked, and if Wingate was correct, the next lot to show up would be better armed, with better ships and weapons, but still not their big front-line ships. With his limited ship-building capacity in Earth orbit, there was no way Scott could build ships fast enough to match what he knew was coming at them. As Wingate pointed out, it took time for the problem to work its way up the chain of command, but at some point, the big guy at the top would find out. How long that would be was an unknown, but not long, he suspected. He made his way back to his cabin and started back in reading reports, thumbprinting some before sending them back, or adding a note here and there. He was halfway down the stack and picking up the next, he started reading the report. Then he muttered an oath.

“Shit! Just what we don’t need right now.”

* * * * * *

Glen Short came awake to the sound of screaming that slowly faded away. He sat up and looked wildly around him, heart pounding, hands sweating, trying to remember where he was. The small, gray concrete room gave him no clue, other than the hard, bench-like bed attached to the wall, and a metal table bolted to the floor. Another horrible scream penetrated the steel door, sounding as if it came from another room close by. Glen jumped off the bed and rushed to the door, but there was no handle on his side. He pounded on it, making it sound like a drum. In answer, the scream came again, chopped off this time by a heavy thud. Glen backed away until he reached the far wall, pressing his back against it. He remembered leaving work from the machine ship. He looked down, saw he was still wearing his work clothes. Then it hit him; he’d stepped through the swinging door into the changing room and found the lights off. He’d reached for the light switch and then … something had knocked him out. Had he been knocked out by an electric shock, or bumped into something? His mind was blank about that.

Time passed, but how long he didn’t know, as his wristcomp was missing. The light in the cell, as that was where he concluded this was, went off and on at irregular intervals, or so it seemed. After it went off the first time, he lay down and just as he fell asleep, the light came back on. Had he slept eight hours? It didn’t feel like it, more like half an hour. He lost track of how long it stayed on, just that the hot, overly bright light in the ceiling stayed on a long time, so when it did go off, it was a blessed relief. Now, it felt as if he’d only just dropped off to sleep when the light came back on, burning through his eyelids and forcing him awake. Hunger and thirst gnawed at him as he crawled to and sat in the corner, his head drooping, only to come awake and find the light off. After a while he simply lost track of day or night, as they blurred into one long semi-twilight of not being awake or asleep. The incessant screaming and the sound of someone in great pain left him a shivering wreck by the time the door finally opened.

The next time Glen came awake, an unfamiliar man in a tailored suit walked in. Behind him came two masked men, each carrying a chair. The first placed a chair on the side of the table, and the man in the suit sat down. The second man placed the other chair on the other side of the table, before both men came over to Glen. They picked him up by the arms, but not roughly, and placed him in the second chair. After that, they went to stand on each side of the now-closed door. Another pain-filled shriek filtered through the steel door, sending a shiver of terror down Glen’s spine.

“I hope you slept well, Mr. Short.”

“What?” Glen sputtered. “Slept well … how could I, with the light going off and on at all hours of the day and night?”

“Day and night? I’m not sure I understand. You have only been in here for a little more than a day, Mr. Short.”

“A day … that’s impossible, I know I’ve been here a lot longer than that.”

The perfectly dressed man shook his head and showed his portacomp. “You got off work at exactly 1800 hours last evening on the twenty-third. It is now 2100 hours on the twenty-fourth.”

“But … but … I … why am I here?” he stuttered, disoriented, confused.

“You have the answer to that question, Mr. Short.” Saying that, the man tapped the surface of the wristcomp and part of the wall dissolved into a giant wall monitor. It showed Glen carefully wrapping parts in some cloth, then placing the cloth-wrapped bundles into a long metal tube. The scene skipped forward to show him hiding the long tube aboard some kind of craft.

“As you can see, we have the visual record of you stealing the parts for a Mark V combat assault rifle and hiding the stolen items aboard a supply shuttle.”

“I … I …”

“Please Mr. Short,” as another choked-off scream filtered through the door, “don’t insult my intelligence by denying you stole the parts. We both know that it would be a lie. All I need from you are the names of the other people you work with here, and who picks up the stolen parts at the other end.”

“May Allah, the merciful, guide my footsteps along the righteous path …” A scream, and someone begging for mercy. “Please … I don’t know what you’re talking about … I … I … don’t …” He broke off as the man in the suit held his hand up.

“There are two ways you can do this, Mr. Short. You can talk to me now, and tell me everything, or…” As if on cue, another scream penetrated the door.

Glen Short always thought of himself as a brave man up until this moment, unwilling to sacrifice anything for his beliefs. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his hands shook. After working in New Zealand with these insane people for a year, he knew without a doubt they were capable of extreme violence. If the screams of the unfortunate individual were anything to go by, his alternative was going to be very painful.

“I’ll … I’ll tell you everything,” he stuttered, a sob escaping his lips as his spirit broke.