Resistance (14 page)

The tracks led past the Titan and over the next rise, indicating that the humans were still on the move, but they were slowing. It wouldn't be long before he and his fellows would be able to savor the coppery taste of human blood. So he waved the others forward, and led them past the horribly ravaged corpse, confident that the chase was about to end.

“Now!” Hale yelled. He and Mark burst from within the hollowed-out corpse already firing, Hale with the Rossmore and Mark with the Reaper. The stinks never had a chance.

Tina had gone ahead, thereby creating a fresh set of tracks that led over the next rise, where she had strict orders to stay out of sight.

The stinks tried to turn, tried to defend themselves, but a hail of close-range projectiles tore them apart. Blood sprayed the snow beyond the Hybrids as they jerked this way and that before collapsing in heaps.

Hale started to reload, discovered that he was out of shotgun ammo, and scrambled up and out of the Titan's abdomen. A Bullseye lay next to its previous owner.

“Come on,” he said cheerfully as he bent to retrieve the weapon. “We're almost there.” They moved to rejoin Tina.

And forty-five minutes later they
were
there when the drone of engines was heard, and the
Party Girl
settled into the soft snow. Two minutes later Hale lifted Tina up
into the cargo compartment, climbed in beside her, and turned to give Mark a helping hand.

“Congratulations,” he said as the hatch began to close. “And welcome to what's left of the United States of America.”

Having convinced Purvis to drop the three of them outside Valentine, Nebraska, Hale was determined to make sure that Mark and Tina would have a place to stay before returning to the SRPA base. The so-called Protection Camps were somewhat controversial because, even though hundreds of thousands of people had decided to enter them, an equal number of people had refused on philosophical grounds, or because they didn't want to subject themselves to the strict, almost military-like discipline required of the internees.

Like all members of the military, Hale was used to strict discipline, and thought of the Freedom First people as whiners. Still, as the delivery truck paused a quarter-mile short of the main gate to let them jump down, he had to admit that the razor wire fences, and the evenly spaced watchtowers, looked a lot like the prisons he'd seen.

Nevertheless there was a long line of people waiting to get in, some pushing wheelbarrows stacked high with belongings, while others wore packs or carried suitcases. Unfortunately many of those in line had nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Babies cried, dogs barked, and old folks looked grim as they waited for the queue to jerk forward.

Eventually, after an hour or so, Hale and his companions drew even with a uniformed guard who confiscated the children's weapons, and would have taken Hale's as well, if the Sentinel hadn't opened his parka to reveal his uniform.

Mark hated to part company with the Reaper but there was nothing he could do about it.

There was a good deal of wailing at the next checkpoint, where people were forced to surrender their pets, all of which were taken away to be euthanized.

Finally, having been allowed to enter the camp's processing center, Hale, Mark, and Tina were shunted into another line intended for orphans. And there were hundreds of them, most of whom were unaccompanied, and trying to help one another as best they could.

The sight of it brought a lump to the back of Hale's throat as a matronly-looking woman welcomed Mark and Tina to the facility, gave them prepacked bags filled with toiletries, and took down their information. She smiled brightly in spite of the fact that the people standing in front of her smelled to high heaven.

“Don't worry, Lieutenant … they'll be well cared for. They'll have to be separated, of course, since we can't have boys and girls living in the same dormitory, but I can assure you that they will receive three square meals a day, good medical care, and be back in school on Monday!”

Neither of the teens looked very happy, but there was nothing any of them could do, so Hale shook hands with Mark and gave Tina an awkward hug. His smile was forced.

“Take care of yourselves, you two …”

Mark gave a jerky nod, and Tina wiped a tear away. Then they watched Hale leave.

Once outside the processing center he saw a square that was obviously used for ceremonial purposes, and beyond that some of the hundreds of identical six-story wooden buildings, all thrown up over the last year or so. Everything was neat as a pin, but there was something depressing about the place, as Hale followed a neatly
kept path toward the main gate. A guard nodded politely. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant … Have a nice day.”

It was too late for that, but as Hale exited the camp, the sun appeared. The warmth felt good on his face—and there was a hot shower to look forward to. And, all things considered, that was as much as Hale could reasonably hope for.

Now if only he could stay out of prison.

“Report to my office at 0900 hours 11/23/51.” Signed, “Maj. Richard Blake.”

The message was waiting in Hale's SRPAnet inbox when he returned to Base 027 and went online. The meeting could be about anything of course, but the brevity of it and Hale's guilty conscience combined to make him uneasy.

Blake's office was located on the admin deck a few doors down from the briefing room in which the officer spent so much of his time. His door was open, and Hale could see him sitting within, but knew better than to enter without an invitation. His knuckles made a rapping sound as he knocked three times.

“Come.”

As Hale took the prescribed three steps forward, he could feel the tension in the air. His boots thumped as he came to attention, his eyes were fixed on the wall over Blake's head, his back was ramrod straight, and his thumbs were aligned with the seams on his carefully pressed trousers. “Lieutenant Hale, reporting as ordered,
sir!”

There was a series of rapid clicking sounds as Blake completed an email message and hit send. Then he
swiveled his chair around to face Hale and made eye contact. It was like looking down a couple of gun barrels. No “At ease,” or invitation to have a seat.

“Well,” Blake said flatly, “how was your three-day pass? Did you have fun?”

Hale's mouth felt dry, so he did what he could to muster some saliva, and then swallowed. All he could do was let the situation play itself out.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“That's good,” Blake growled. “That's
real
good … Because your little vacation cost a great deal of money. First there's a full load of Avgas for the VTOL you rode in, then there's the Fareye you took with you, but failed to return, plus three grenades and various other pieces of government property. All of which are going to be deducted from your pay. Do you read me, Lieutenant?”

Hale's eyes remained focused on the spot directly above Blake's head.

“Sir! Yes, sir.”

“I guess you think we're
stupid,”
Blake continued. “And maybe your plan would have worked, except I sent people to find you, and guess what? You weren't in your quarters, and you hadn't checked out through the main gate, which meant you had left some other way. Aboard the
Party Girl
as it happens.”

Blake paused, and made a point of taking a document from a stack of papers and studying it silently. “By the way, Hale,” he added ominously, “you might find it interesting to know that Lieutenant Purvis will be flying every shit detail his CO can come up with for the next thirty days. So you might want to avoid him. I don't imagine he'll be pleased.” He returned the document to its stack.

“Now,” Blake continued, as he leaned back in his chair, “enough about Purvis … Let's talk about
you
. I
could have your bars, but court-martials involve a lot of paperwork, and I
hate
paperwork. And why bother? Because I have a rather challenging mission lined up for you—and the odds are you won't make it back. That will save me a lot of aggravation. So be in the briefing room at 1100 hours, and see if you can avoid getting lost along the way.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Hale responded, his face wooden.

Blake nodded. “Dismissed.”

Hale did a neat about-face, took two steps, and was almost out the door.

“And Hale …”

Hale paused to look back. “Sir?”

There was something like sympathy in the major's eyes. “I'm sorry about your family.”

Hale nodded. “Thank you, sir. They were good people.”

And with that he left.

The briefing room was packed when Hale arrived at 1050 hours. A sure sign that something big was in the offing. Senior officers and SRPA officials were seated toward the front of the rectangular room leaving captains, lieutenants, and half a dozen NCOs to find chairs farther back. Which was fine with Hale.

All the doughnuts were gone, but there was plenty of coffee, so Hale filled a mug and took it back to a seat located between a portly supply officer and a square-jawed sergeant major. Both could see his nametag—not to mention the color of his eyes.

Hale was worried that he might have to make conversation with one or both of the men, but he was granted a reprieve when Blake called the meeting to order.

“Good morning … And welcome to Operation Iron
Fist. We've been taking a lot of shit from the Chimera lately, and this will be an opportunity to hit back.

“Iron Fist will be a combined forces operation involving the 5th Ranger Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hawkins”—he nodded in the direction of a man in the front row—“and a Sentinel SAR team, under the command of Lieutenant Nathan Hale.” He acknowledged Hale with a similar gesture. “Besides killing as many freaks as we can, the objective of this little outing will be to locate and retrieve what could be some very important tech.”

Hale felt a combination of pride, embarrassment, and fear. The sergeant major grinned knowingly. “The good news is you'll be in command of a team,” he whispered. “And the bad news is that you'll be in command of a team!”

Hale smiled. That was the strange thing about being an officer. The simultaneous desire to be in command and the fear of what might happen as a result of a lack of preparation, poor judgment, or bad luck.

“Before we review the details of the mission, Dr. Linda Barrie will provide you with some important background information,” Blake continued. “For those of you who haven't met her, Dr. Barrie is a graduate of MIT and a member of SRPA's technology assessment team. They're the folks who study the items the SAR teams bring back, assess their potential, and tell us how to exploit them. Dr. Barrie?”

Barrie was one of only three women in the room, which by itself was enough to make her stand out, but the fact that she was stunningly beautiful guaranteed that every eye was on her as she took the podium. Her black hair was short and straight, her brown eyes were partially hidden by bangs, and her lips displayed only a trace of red lipstick. She wore a plain leather jacket and
khaki pants that couldn't be considered glamorous. She cleared her throat and began to speak.

“Thank you, Major. As a result of missions like the one Captain Anton Nash led a few days ago, SRPA has been able to reverse-engineer technology developed by the Chimera, and make incredible advances in a relatively short period of time. And now, because of an artifact recovered by Captain Nash and his men, we have what may be an opportunity to take another leap forward.”

At that point Barrie removed a remote from the podium and aimed it at the wall screen. Video swirled and locked up into an image that Hale recognized right away. Thousands of lights glittered deep within the gelatinous cube, and as the camera zoomed in, Hale could see tiny sparks jumping the gaps between them.
It wasn't doing that before
, he mused silently.
They must have figured out how to turn it on …

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Barrie inquired of no one in particular. “But this is beauty with a purpose. What you're looking at is an optical computer … Meaning that it uses photons rather than electrons to store and manipulate information. We're still in the process of figuring out how to replicate it, but we've been able to retrieve a great deal of data from it, and screen that information for importance.

“The best way to think of the cube is as a filing cabinet,” Barrie added, as she turned back toward the audience. “And, like most filing cabinets, it's stuffed with all manner of things, some of which are useful and some of which are not. One of the items that
is
of value could be described as a fuel inventory. And by fuel I don't mean gasoline.” She leaned forward for emphasis.

“I mean
nuclear
fuel, like the plutonium that was recovered from Great Britain and taken to our research facility
in New Mexico. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get the necessary yields out of the plutonium, and at the rate things are going, it could be years before we have nuclear weapons that can be used against the Chimera.”

That comment elicited a rumble of conversation because if there was one thing the men and women in the briefing room knew, it was that the United States was running out of time.

Barrie nodded, and continued. “According to the fuel inventory we've deciphered, the stinks are storing nuclear fuel in a recently completed base near the town of Hot Springs, South Dakota. So we're going to attack in force, draw most of the defenders into a pitched battle, and send a SAR team in to snatch what we need. Once the people in New Mexico have a chance to analyze it, there's a very good chance that they'll be able to achieve the necessary breakthrough, and produce the nuclear weaponry we need.

“I guess that's about it,” she concluded. “Thank you.”

As Barrie returned to her seat, Hale already was thinking about the mission ahead. Nash had been correct, the storage cube
was
important, and Hale wished that he had lived long enough to learn
how
important.