‘No. Oh, I should point out that no pope has taken the name Peter since the first one. It was never actually a rule they couldn’t, but no one did. Until this one. I consider it a bad sign. Then again, he excommunicated me in absentia, so I don’t tend to view him in a good light.’
‘Okay. Where does the Church of the Lost fit in?’
‘A number of, well, cults started up after the Wave. The Church of the Lost falls into the group who believe they can still be redeemed if they can do sufficient good before Jesus pays his next visit. Their mission is to redeem the people of the NYA through good work and prayer. Mostly the latter. It could be worse. They fall into a group of cultish Christians known as Redeemers, and there are categories of Redeemers. Angelic Redeemers think Titans are incarnated angels and demons, on Earth to fight for the fate of us humans. Devotional Redeemers think they have to live lives of prayer.’
‘Like the Church of the Lost.’
‘Pretty much. They’re okay, they’re just parasites. Warrior Redeemers, or Militant Redeemers, believe that Titans are demons who must be killed, every last one, before they get to move on. And lastly, there are Nihilist Redeemers who believe everyone has to die. They don’t normally last long.’
‘I’d imagine they aren’t popular.’
‘Ha! No. Anyway, none of the religions here really like me. They don’t think I should be leading the NYA.’
‘Because you’re a woman, or because you’re a Titan?’
‘Well, both, but mainly because I renounced my faith. Publicly. Before the Wave, atheism was gaining in popularity and becoming less of a stigma, but it was still more or less political suicide to state openly that you didn’t believe, especially if you were running for president. Now, a lot of people saw the Hand of God in the Wave. They think it’s irrational to think otherwise. On the other hand, they prefer me to the alternatives. Sometimes I wish they’d stop.’
~~~
‘I wish to fly over to France,’ Joe said over dinner. ‘I would like to check out Paris for myself and see what has happened there.’
‘Oh,’ Mercy said.
‘Oh,’ Sophia said.
‘A noble goal,’ Nick said, ‘but are you sure you can make it over the Atlantic?’
‘No,’ Joe said flatly, ‘which is why I wish to make the attempt. It’s a goal rather than an intention. I don’t know how tiring long-distance flight will be, but I don’t think I can manage it in one hop. It would take something like eighteen hours at my top speed. However, I think I could do it by hopping there via Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, and the UK. My intention is to fly shorter routes until I am confident that I can make the long one.’
‘At least you’ve thought it through,’ Mercy said. ‘Nick’s right, it’s a noble goal. Plus, more information on the state of things in Europe would be useful. If we can send you out with a shortwave radio, you can report back.’
‘And let us know whether you’re coming back,’ Sophia added. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Frenchman, but I think we’d miss you.’
‘Ah, Sophia,’ Joe said, grinning, ‘you say the sweetest things.’
Airborne over Danbury, CT, 10th May.
Basic air navigation had not changed a great deal since it had been invented. Oh, there was GPS and inertial navigation and all sorts of other advances to make things easier, but when it came right down to it, when you had nothing else you could use, you followed the roads.
Of course, that was a little more difficult now, but the major routes had not fallen to nature sufficiently that you could not see them from quite a height. They might be broken and partially grassed, but there was still a solid surface there to look for.
That was what brought Joe to Danbury at about half-past ten in the morning on his first test flight. He was maxing-out his speed and it had taken him just twenty minutes to fly up Manhattan Island, and then up across the farms and the buffer zone. Then he had followed the roads north and east, ultimately aiming for Boston.
Danbury was a small city, though when you compared its size before the Wave to New York City now, there was relatively little difference. It was, so far as Joe could see, largely intact, but there was no sign of anyone living there. Like a lot of the former United States, Danbury had been depopulated by storms and the Wave itself. It was more than a little depressing. Hopefully, the survivors of Danbury had escaped to the NYA rather than perishing, but Joe feared that had rarely been the case.
He went on and fifteen minutes later he was flying over Hartford and coming up on the Connecticut River, according to his map. Hartford had been the capital of Connecticut and now it was… not. At least, West Hartford was empty, but East Hartford, on the eastern side of the river, seemed to be another matter. There Joe spotted fortifications of various sorts: palisades along the edge of the river, guard posts on the two surviving bridges, and embankments and trenches irregularly placed around the town.
There were people down there too. Quite a lot of people. Estimating was almost impossible, but the number had to be in the thousands. Something about them made Joe decide to keep flying rather than dropping in for a chat. Maybe it was the number of weapons on display, or the rather rough clothing he saw. Maybe it was just an instinct.
Whatever, he kept on going. Far ahead of him was Boston and, if he was miraculously lucky, coffee and a pastry in a shop somewhere in the city.
New York Authority.
‘There were no coffee shops,’ Joe said.
‘This is why you want to go to Paris, isn’t it?’ Sophia said. ‘The whole point is to find a coffee shop so you can sit outside it with a newspaper and look stereotypically French.’
‘I have never looked stereotypically French. Though, if I could do that, I would be a happy man. However, I think my chances in Paris are less than they were in Boston.’
‘What did you see?’ Mercy asked. ‘Aside, obviously, from the lack of coffee shops.’
‘Well, there were people. I didn’t get to see many of them, but they were there. They were… nervous, hiding. I don’t get the feeling there was as much organisation up there as there is here, but they had people watching me as I looked around. I saw weapons. Mostly scavenged guns. I assume someone raided a gun shop or two.’
‘Even with the controls brought in in twenty fifty-three,’ Mercy said, ‘America still had the highest gun ownership figures in the world. By a huge margin. Now there are fewer people around to soak up all those weapons. Ammunition may be getting tight after all this time. Maybe.’
‘Unless they have a Maker who can create the stuff,’ Sophia said.
‘True.’
‘Anyway,’ Joe went on, ‘they seemed to be doing open farming. I saw a couple of fields wrecked by storms. It can’t be easy.’
‘What about the surrounding areas?’ Nick asked. ‘There must be people out there who aren’t in the cities.’
‘I didn’t see much evidence of it. I overflew some cultivated fields outside Boston. There was next to nothing from the boundaries of the NYA out to Worcester and Providence. I came back on the southern route through Rhode Island. There was basically very little to see from Providence back to Hartford. East Hartford was fortified. There was a palisade and trenches. Someone’s set up shop there. Rough-looking bunch. I’m not sure on the numbers, but in the thousands from the number I could see on the streets.’
‘The Damned Ones,’ Mercy said. ‘I think the Damned Ones roam that area. I’ll go talk to President Richard in the morning. If they have set up a fortified area in Hartford, it might be something the NYA should know about. How was your endurance? Any problems flying that far?’
‘No, but it wasn’t that far. I’ll go south tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I’ll give you a report on the DC area.’
11th May.
Faith was busy in the morning, but one of her aides suggested that it might be better to report the sighting to General Hart anyway, so that was what Mercy did. She was not exactly impressed by his response.
>
Hart was the kind of commander Mercy expected to be in the Army, especially at significant rank. The puffed-up type. It was a prejudice held over from her time in the Marines. She tried not to let it show too much, but he made it hard. Hart had a handlebar moustache. Seriously? Did anyone think that looked good? Above the moustache was a nose which should have been gracing an eagle. An American eagle, obviously. He had sharp, blue eyes, narrowed a little by age and general tendency; the man seemed to be perpetually frowning. There was nowhere near as much age on display as there might have been; Hart was a minor Titan and his almost ninety years were not evident. Then again, he kept his blonde hair cut so short, grey had no chance of showing. He had a rugged face. Just rugged, not ruggedly handsome. He had a solid jawline, but that was as good as it got. He had a moderately solid body too, though he was shorter than Mercy by an inch or so. She got the impression he did not like that since he invited her to sit as soon as she walked into his office.
‘Our pilot, Capitaine Janvier, spotted some activity out in Hartford we thought might be important,’ Mercy explained when he asked.
‘What kind of activity, Colonel Garner?’ He had a rough voice, stern but solid, a bit like his face.
‘Well, we’re not certain, but we think the Damned Ones may have re-established their territory there. He saw fortifications. A palisade along the river, trenches around the eastern side of the city. He described the residents as “rough-looking.”’
Hart looked at her for a couple of seconds. ‘That’s not much to go on.’
‘Did you know about a fortified enclave in Hartford?’
‘We have no intelligence indicating such an encampment.’
‘Joe said there were probably several thousand people there. That’s more than an encampment, and now you do have intelligence about them.’
‘Yes. Of course. I’ll look into sending some scouts out to that area when we have people available.’
Mercy got to her feet. ‘Sure. Have a good day, General.’
‘The same to you, Colonel.’
~~~
Hart’s lukewarm reaction to the news of possible Damned One activity bothered Mercy. Faith had suggested that the Damned Ones were a force to be concerned about and Hart had seemed… dismissive. Of course, the leader of the Damned Ones had killed Faith’s father, so maybe she was more inclined to paint them as a problem when more level heads might see them as an irritant. Somehow, Hart’s attitude still bothered Mercy.
To get over it, she set about following Joe’s example. She could teleport like he could fly, but she had little idea what kind of limitations she had. In the fight in the cannabis farm, she had operated largely on instinct, and that had worked, but she felt a more scientific approach might be better.
Standing in the street outside their apartment, she began her testing with something she figured would be easy. ‘Short hops,’ she said to herself. ‘No more than a hundred metres at a time.’
She gave that up fairly quickly because it was boring, and she could do it easily. Switching up to twenty metres at a time was no less boring. At a hundred metres she began failing about once in ten tries, though taking a second to set her target in her mind solved that problem. So, she extended her range further…
~~~
‘Basically,’ Mercy said, ‘I can go up to about five hundred metres without much trouble. I may need to take a few seconds to fix where I’m going in my head, but I can nail five hundred metres pretty much all the time. It gets more difficult much further than that because I can’t really see where I’m going.’
‘That makes sense,’ Nick said. ‘You presumably need a strong idea of your target for you to translocate to that spot.’ He paused briefly before adding, ‘I never, under any circumstances, expected to be discussing matter transportation in a serious manner.’
Mercy grinned. ‘I suppose the Wave changed a lot of preconceptions about what’s possible.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘Well, I made it back to here from about five kilometres away. I had to focus for… ten or so seconds to be sure I’d make it, but I jumped first time. I can jump at least five klicks if I put my mind to it.’
‘You could cover quite some distance fairly quickly that way, assuming you know where you’re going. Was there any fatigue?’
‘Not that I noticed. They change the guard out at Indian Point on Friday afternoons. Tomorrow, I’m going to go out there with them, take a look around, and then jump back. That’s about sixty kilometres in a straight line. We’ll see how that goes.’ Mercy turned to Joe. ‘How was DC?’
‘Quiet,’ Joe replied. ‘I saw few people there and those I saw did not look impressed that someone was flying over them without mechanical transport. There were more in Philadelphia, but I saw little indication of organisation once again. They had roof gardens, but no fields planted. Baltimore showed some signs of occupation, but the residents looked… odd. I decided not to look too closely. There were people on the streets, moving slowly. Shambling.’
‘Like zombies?’
‘Just like zombies. Not that I believe in zombies.’
‘Please see above regarding changes in preconceptions,’ Nick said.
‘What about the Capitol and the White House?’ Mercy asked.
‘Someone is occupying the White House. There were guards on the grounds and some fortification. The Capitol looked gutted, perhaps a fire. The shops through most of Washington had been heavily looted and/or burned out. I think there was some displeasure at the government after the Wave.’
‘That seems reasonable,’ Sophia said. ‘I can imagine there were riots.’
‘The president hid in a bunker,’ Mercy said. ‘I can understand why, but it can’t have gone down that well with the people. Not that anyone could have done anything to prevent what happened…’
‘When has that ever meant anything to those affected by tragedy?’ Nick asked.
‘Never. People always want someone to blame when the shit hits the fan. And this was a lot of shit hitting a very big fan.’
Indian Point, 12th May.
Buchanan, NY, was gone. The area was now known by the name of its most controversial feature, the Indian Point nuclear facility. The village’s buildings had been flattened, either intentionally or in one of the wars, to be replaced with fortifications, if you could call them that. There were some wire fences, but mostly the defences of Indian Point consisted of trenches and embankments. Effective enough, but not exactly high-tech.
Originally a three-unit fission plant, the Indian Point Energy Center had shut down in 2021 and had still been in the process of full decommissioning when it had been chosen as a site for a new type of fusion plant in 2075. House prices in the area had dropped immediately. Fusion reactors were becoming commonplace, limited primarily by the availability of tritium to fuel them and lithium to provide radiation shielding. The deuterium–tritium reaction was relatively easy to initiate, but it needed the relatively rare tritium and produced a lot of high-energy neutrons as a by-product. Lithium shielding not only helped stop the neutrons, but also allowed tritium to be bred in the process. Great in theory, but tritium was difficult to handle, and you really needed a constant, enriched supply of lithium-6 when lithium-7 was the more common form. And you could not catch all of the neutrons…
So, the relative safety of the alternate deuterium–deuterium reaction used at Indian Point was pushed heavily. In reality, the reaction created some tritium, some of which would then burn to create high-energy neutrons. As much tritium as possible was removed before it could react, but the system was not yet perfect. This was downplayed and, in reality, turned out to be less of an issue than the alarmist press made of it. The Indian Point fusion reactor went online in 2081 and began producing power for the grid two years later. Its safety record was no worse than any other large industrial plant.
Mercy had learned all this in school. She had been thirteen when she had seen the ceremony where the supply from the pl
ant had been plugged into the grid on the evening news. Even then, she had thought the plant looked like a military bunker more than a power plant. Now, surrounded by defences which included several small tanks, the impression was stronger.
Some effort had been made to make the place look like a futuristic factory. There were concrete fins built into the domed central reactor building, but most of those had been damaged or entirely broken at some point in the past. What was left was a bare concrete dome with broken teeth mounted on it. Surrounding that were various ancillary buildings, including housing for the thousand troops and five hundred staff who kept the place safe and operational.
Once a week, on a Friday, the guard was changed out. A thousand men and women rode on repurposed city buses – which ran on batteries charged at the reactor – to Indian Point, and then a different thousand men and women rode back. The repurposing had involved stripping the seats out so that more people could be packed onto fewer buses, and this Friday the outgoing troop count was one thousand and one.
It was not an unpleasant journey for Mercy. She got to ride up front beside the driver. Everyone else maintained a respectful distance from her, even if it meant cramming the standing space a little more tightly further back. The only exception to that was Colonel Kennedy Baxter, one of two NYAS colonels who managed security at Indian Point. He stood beside Mercy. Not too close, but clearly meaning to indicate that he was neither scared of her nor too awestruck. In fact, he seemed to have something of an ulterior motive for taking up his position which Mercy was doing her best to ignore.
He was a useful source of information, despite his personal interest. ‘Tanks, Colonel Baxter?’ Mercy asked as the convoy of buses drove past one of the stationary armoured vehicles.
‘Some of the ones they brought with them when they arrived in the area,’ Baxter replied. He was not old enough to have been around when the NYA had been founded. Like a lot of the NYAS, he had been born after the Wave. ‘Most of them don’t move anymore, and a couple of them don’t actually work at all. They’re deterrents more than functioning defences.’
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