Strike (20 page)

“Join the club,” Kent said.

Colonel Pike looked to be in her forties, which meant she was probably nearing the end of her life, based on the way things worked in the twenty-fourth century. She seemed to be in pretty good shape for an older lady. She could have passed for younger if not for her salt-and-pepper hair. When she spoke she didn’t waste words. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a military commander. Unless you were Colonel Feit, that is. That guy loved to hear himself talk.

“Kinsey has given us a thorough briefing on you all,” Pike began. “I must say, it was quite impressive.”

“Who’s Kinsey?” Kent asked me.

“Olivia,” I replied.

“Oh, right.”

“We know all about you, but you know little of us,” she went on. “Let’s correct that. We are all career Air Force. We love our country. We took an oath to protect our flag. But the direction the government, and by extension the military, has taken is untenable. No matter what we may feel about the choices made by those who came before us, there is no jus-tification for genocide. It is barbaric. It is immoral. It must be stopped.”

“You get no argument from us,” I said.

“We have all been fulfilling our duties to support the mission to colonize the past. We are aware of every facet. I know Colonel Feit well. We went through the Academy together. He is, to use a word you might be familiar with, a ‘tool.’”

I wanted to laugh, but held it in.

“But he’s a smart tool,” she added. “He sees this mission as some sort of game. Major Bova on the other hand is a very different kind of animal. He enjoys inflicting punishment. Frankly, if he were a bit more humane in his treatment of the native workers, the colonization camp would be complete by now. But those are only two of the officers who are directing this endeavor. It is a massive undertaking that was planned and prepped for years by both the military and the United States government. The goal is both simple and brutal. Our mission is to replace the population of the twenty-first century with the population of the twenty-fourth century. It is a crime that is beyond unfathomable.”

“So then why have you been going along with it?” Tori asked.

“We could quit in protest,” Sokol said. “But what good would that do? Many of us want this to end, but our numbers are relatively small. We could go public and refuse to do our duty, but the machine would continue on. Public opinion supports the invasion. We are in the minority. That’s why the Sounders were born.”

“It began with whispers,” Pike said. “A few of us started voicing our concerns to each other. Carefully. Quietly. Eventually we found others who felt as we did. We’d meet secretly, often times right here in this basement. Over time our numbers grew along with our outrage. We created an extensive network within the Air Force. There are Sounders everywhere, both here and in the past, working right alongside those loyal to the Air Force’s mission. We vowed to do whatever we could to disrupt their plans. Olivia Kinsey here is a perfect example. She was assigned by the Air Force to infiltrate Pemberwick Island. Her mission was to report back on the movements of SYLO once the invasion began.”

“What I was going to do instead was just the opposite,” Olivia said. “I was going to make myself known to SYLO and help them with whatever information I had about the Retros. But I never got the chance.”

Pike said, “We have medical staff at the colonization base giving care to those who Bova would rather let die. There are drone pilots who deliberately passed over targets, saving the lives of thousands of people. Construction on many of the secondary domes has gone poorly because of mysterious disruptions in the process. We have quietly done what we could to help the victims of the past—”

“Except for the one thing that needed to be done,” I said. “Stopping the invasion.”

“We don’t have the power to pull off a coup and overthrow the government,” Sokol said. “It’s as simple as that.”

“So then what’s the big plan?” Tori asked. “Olivia said you’re going to try and stop the Air Force. If you don’t have the numbers, how is that possible?”

Pike glanced back to the others as if looking to get their permission to continue. She was met with nods and shrugs.

“Our plan is to stage a mission that involves a rudimentary military tactic that has been used effectively since the dawn of warfare,” she explained.

“Which is?” Tori asked.

“We’re going to blow up the Bridge,” Sokol said.

Tori and I exchanged looks.

“Cool,” Kent said.

“Simple as that?” I said.

“No, it isn’t,” Pike replied. “Though the Bridge was created over seventy years ago, the phenomenon that created the time anomaly remains a mystery. Physicists from both times have studied the Bridge and have yet to come up with a definitive explanation as to why the atomic blast created it. The one thing they can all agree on is that the explosion propelled matter faster than the speed of light, which would mean the Bridge could only have been opened to the future.”

“So there’s no such thing as blasting open a doorway into the past?” I asked.

“So they say,” Pike replied.

“You’ve seen the rigid frame that was built around the bridge in both times,” Sokol said. “All that frame does is define the opening. It serves no other purpose. Our fear is that if we try to sabotage the Bridge in a conventional way, all we’d end up doing is destroying the frame. We need to be sure that the Bridge itself is sealed.”

“So how do you do that?” Kent asked.

“Not all of the Sounders are military,” Pike explained. “We have engaged physicists and engineers who are as appalled at the misuse of this incredible gift as we are. They have a theory, though unfortunately it is nothing more than a theory. Their thinking is that the only way to seal the Bridge is with another event that duplicates the original, only on this side of time.”

The three of us sat there, stunned by her words.

The five Sounders stared back at us, waiting for our reaction.

“Do you understand what she’s saying?’ Olivia finally said.

“Uh, yeah,” I said abruptly. “You’re going to set off another atomic bomb inside the dome.”

“Exactly,” Pike said.

“Wait,” Kent said. “You just so happen to have an atomic bomb lying around?

“Several,” Sokol said with a mischievous smile.

“Wait, what?” Tori said.

“Kinsey tells us that you were at Fenway Park when that dome project was destroyed by the SYLO forces,” Pike said. “That wasn’t the only dome under construction in the past. There are three more going up as we speak.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They are duplicates of the original dome here in the desert. As much as the government has decided that we’re better off living in the past, they’re hedging their bets. They plan to build several of those domes around the world, then once we have colonized the past and set the world on a new course, they would duplicate the event that created the original Bridge—”

“And blast a few more bridges to the future,” I exclaimed. “But why?”

“You can’t change the future,” Sokol said. “This time will always be the disaster that it is now. The thinking is that once the world has been set on a more responsible course, Bridges can be opened to the future of that new and better world. Nobody here wants to live in the past forever. They want to live in a better version of their own time.”

“Can they do that and move forward to this exact same time?” Tori asked.

“Doubtful,” Pike said. “It isn’t an exact science but that doesn’t really matter. They want to leave this wretched time, go back to a more hospitable era, fix the mistakes that were made, and then reap the benefits of an improved future.”

“They want to have their cake and eat it too,” Kent said. “Is it possible?”

“In theory,” Pike replied. “But it would mean setting off an atomic device in each of the new domes.”

“So that’s why the bombs exist,” I said.

“You saw the heavily guarded building outside of the dome?” Sokol asked. “That’s where they are. Our plan is to smuggle one of the devices into the dome, seal the door, and set the beast off. The physicists tell us the ensuing explosion stands a very good chance of sealing the Bridge. But even if it doesn’t, the radiation released inside the dome will be enough to delay the invasion and colonization. Best-case scenario is we destroy the Bridge. Worse case is we buy time for SYLO to regroup and prepare a better defense. Either way, it’s worth the risk.”

The room fell silent as we tried to wrap our heads around the incredible plan.

“Any questions?” Pike asked.

“Yeah,” Kent said. “Why are we the last pieces of the puzzle? I don’t know anything about setting off atomic bombs.”

The Sounders exchanged uneasy looks. I had the feeling we were about to hear something we weren’t going to like.

“As we told you, the Sounders aren’t a formidable military force,” Pike said. “Once this mission is underway, it will be next to impossible to see it through without the Air Force trying to stop us.”

“Yeah, duh,” Kent said.

“We believe we have the capability of mounting an operation that will keep the military back long enough for us to place the device, seal the dome, and detonate it.”

“Problem is,” Sokol said. “There are two fronts to defend. Here, and in the past. There’s a large Air Force presence in that colonization camp. They’ve got heavy artillery and they’ve got drones. The moment we controlled the Bridge from this side, all they’d have to do is attack us from the other side and we’d be finished.”

“Yeah, your butts would be totally exposed,” Kent said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Pike replied.

“So for your plan to work, you’ve got to control the dome in the past as well,” Tori said.

“Exactly,” Pike replied. “But we don’t have the strength or the numbers to do that.”

“So your plan is worthless unless you can figure out a way to capture the dome in the past,” Kent said.

“That’s right,” Pike said. “And we’ve come up with that plan.”

“Wait, I thought you said you don’t have the manpower,” Kent said.

“We don’t.”

“Then who does?” he asked, exasperated.

There was a long moment of silence until the truth hit me.

“SYLO,” I said softly.

All eyes shot to me.

“SYLO?” Kent repeated, incredulous.

“Who else? That’s right, isn’t it, Colonel?” I asked.

Colonel Pike answered with a small smile.

“Whoa, wait,” Kent said. “You expect them to invade the base, fight their way through ground troops and those flying death machines, and set up around the dome to keep the Retros from rushing inside and stopping you from blowing up a bomb in the future?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Sokol said.

“That’s crazy!” Kent said with a laugh. “How are you going to get them to do that?”

Nobody said a word.

Kent looked to me, and then to Tori. A second later, the light bulb went on.

“Oh,” he said softly. “And there’s the last piece of the puzzle.”

“The SYLO commanders have no idea that the Sounders exist,” Pike said. “Trust me when I tell you that if events continue on this course, SYLO will be defeated and there is little we Sounders can do to prevent that. The past will be overrun and the remaining population will be eradicated. It won’t matter what kind of resistance SYLO puts up. Our Air Force has limitless resources. We can keep sending death machines to the past, losing a hundred every hour, and replacing them with another two hundred the following day. SYLO will eventually be worn down and destroyed.”

“Why doesn’t SYLO just launch a nuke to blow up the Bridge themselves?” Kent asked.

“There’s nobody left to launch them,” Sokol answered. “The nuclear arsenals of your time are useless. It was one of the first targets when the invasion began. SYLO can’t even replace the conventional weapons they’ve lost because there is no longer any manufacturing capability. It truly is only a matter of time and that time is now. The next offensive is gearing up. I’ve seen the plans. I know the missions. Most of the physical structures of the past were left intact when the first wave happened. That won’t be the case this time. The Air Force is going scorched-earth. Entire cities will disappear. The wave after that will finish off the remaining population. It’s about to happen. Sealing the Bridge is the only hope of stopping this insanity and giving the people of your time the chance to rebuild from what’s left. Your world as you know it will cease to exist, unless we can convince SYLO to intervene.”

“Unless
you
can convince them,” Pike added.

“Why us?” Kent asked anxiously.

“They know you,” Olivia said. She stepped forward to face us and spoke with passion. “Hell, your parents work for them. You know Granger, Tucker. If we tried to reach them directly do you think they’d believe us?”

“No,” I said softly.

“Of course not,” Olivia said. “They already know how we’ve infiltrated their arks. They’d interrogate us and try to figure out if there’s any truth to what we’re saying and while that’s going on, the clock will be ticking on doomsday. Even if we eventually convinced them that there are people on this side who want to help, it will be too late because the offensive will be launched and the people of the past will be wiped out. This has to happen now.
Right
now. We need SYLO’s help and you guys are our best hope of getting it.”

That was it. We knew what they wanted from us. The decision to help or not to help was ours to make.

I looked to Tori.

She took my hand and squeezed it.

“The killing has to stop,” she said with certainty.

I looked to Kent.

“I think it’s nuts,” he said. “We’ll have to dodge through a city of Retros who are all out looking for us, get back to the dome, sneak inside and jump through to the past, then find a way to escape from that damned work camp and make our way across miles of empty desert to try to somehow get to SYLO. Even if we did all of that, we’d still have to convince Granger to attack the base. I’m sorry, if that’s the last piece of the puzzle then it’s one sorry puzzle.”

“So you’re out?” I asked.