Unknown

by Microsoft Office User

  “Mickelsby,” she said.

  “Sir?”

  “Have you established a lock on the northwestern pylon?”

  “Negative. Signals are muddied along the edge of the fry wall. I'll probably need to get another 40 meters in.”

  “Hammerstein,” she said.

  “Sir?”

  “Enact countermeasures for the subterranean motion-sensor array and confirm you have a block on their signals.”

  “Initiating now, sir. Countermeasures now grappling five ... six ... seven ... eight sensor arrays. The path is cleared, sir.”

  Janise did not have time to enjoy the adrenaline as she turned and nodded to the five soldiers in her Sprint unit. She pointed two of them, Hammerstein and Mickelsby, off into a route taking them closest to the northwestern pylon. They would have first crack at disengaging the unit and breaking a hole in the fry wall. Soldiers Grant and Palmerston were motioned off due west. They would track back around and provide rear cover for Hammerstein and Mickelsby.

  Janise turned to the only soldier who remained close by.

  “OK, Lange. Let's move in.”

  “Yes, sir.” The youngest member of the unit saluted his CO, raised his Schnelling gun and advanced ahead of her. Their primary responsibility was to provide flanking cover. They would also be the second tandem to try to disengage the pylon if Hammerstein and Mickelsby didn't make it.

  “Dance1 to Dance2,” she said. “Break up the diamond.”

  “Copy that, Captain. We're moving.”

  Janise and Lange advanced another 20 meters then dropped down behind underbrush. Janise studied the viop schematics of the perimeter of the PAC facility. It only took 20 seconds to spot decisive movement along the northwestern quadrant. At least 25 Guardsmen moved due south.

  “Lange, I want you to disengage your SCH launcher and crip-on the silencer extension to the central barrel. It's a risk, I know, but I want to keep this as quiet as I can for as long as I can.”

  “Yes, sir,” the young soldier complied, loading a long, black silencer unit onto the end of the gun. Its coiling mechanism was so huge the adjacent grenade launcher could not be fired simultaneous to the supermachine gun without the weapon exploding in the soldier's hands. Janise did the same.

  Again, Janise studied the viop supports, and she was pleasantly surprised by the versatility Dance2 showed in its advance through a jungle considerably denser than Dance1 traversed. Dance2 intentionally failed to deploy countermeasures against the underground motion sensors, immediately drawing attention from both the northwestern and southwestern Guard units. And now, as Dance2 was within 20 seconds of being hopelessly flanked, Janise turned to Lange.

  “Move swiftly and keep down, soldier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they sprinted through saw grass, frangipani and around the base of mahogany trees, and as the PAC facility emerged in full lighted glory, the soldiers kept a watchful eye on the “lures” that surely lay dead ahead.

  Janise was picking up only two such soldiers along this perimeter. It was a weaker presence than she anticipated.

  The ground was compacted, and there was only the most subtle crunch of debris beneath their boots.

  Snap.

  Janise and Lange stopped, looked at each other and stooped.

  Snap.

  They saw the helmet of the enemy soldier. He was moving slowly, unconcerned, through brush no more than 10 meters directly ahead. Janise turned to Lange and placed a finger to her lips.

  She steadied herself and raised her weapon, placed the soldier in the crosshairs and zoomed in. Before she fired, Janise wanted to make certain exactly what they were up against. She hoped the Guard would not dress a remote unit in full body armor, but there was no such luck on this count: The soldier's complement of armor and helmet was very similar to her own, with only minor differences to reflect an eight-year gap in design. He carried a standard-issue Schnelling gun and nothing more from what Janise could detect.

  “This is probably the last thing you'd ever expect,” she whispered to the soldier as she narrowed the crosshairs and aimed for the only area of the armor vulnerable to a bullet. Janise felt nothing but cold disdain as she focused then twice pressed the trigger button.

  Two muted pops discharged from the gun, and the soldier's head jerked violently as a tiny area just beneath his helmet's collar brace disintegrated and the bullets tore into his neck. He was dead before his body crumpled to the ground.

  “Good shooting, sir,” Lange said.

  “Should be. I was trained by the best.”

  They moved forward, but much more slowly, and Janise ordered Lange to scope out the brush due left. The viop showed none of the enemy close by.

  She stood over the soldier she killed. He was face down, his weapon next to his outstretched left arm. She kicked him over and pulled back his face shield.

  An explosion of blood had splattered inside the helmet across the man's face and shield. His eyes were open, and they were green. Janise figured he was about her age.

  “Don't worry,” she told him. “You won't be the only one.”

  Suddenly, she was distracted by a flash in the viop support grid, and then she smiled. There was a movement behind and well above Dance2, an object zeroing in on the convergence zone of Front Guard and Second Sunrise troops.

  “Get ready, Dance2. The eagle is about to take a shit.”

  “Copy that, Dance1. Down! Down!”

  She did not see the first explosions along the western perimeter, but their sounds were unmistakable: A volley of thunder emanating from the Sprint that brought Dance2 to Barbados. The vehicle was on a preprogrammed auto-flight assignment, targeting all weapons signatures not matching those of her crew. The spiraling weapons ports on the Sprint unloaded laser mallets at four per second.

  In that moment, as the chaos erupted, horns blazed from within the facility, and a series of perimeter spotlights were triggered. Janise ducked quickly out of the line of the closest light.

  Lange was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hammerstein, Mickelsby, do you copy?”

  “Yes, sir. We're moving in. We have a lock on the pylon. Also showing four enemy targets bearing down!”

  “Just get in there. We're in this shit now. We're ...”

  Her words fell apart as again there was a distraction, but this time it was not the viop support. In fact, the Front Guard soldier who emerged from behind a palm and was aiming directly at her did not register on the viop sensors.

  “What the fuck?”

  He did not hesitate, and bullets rained from his SCH. Janise buckled, was hurled backward as easily a dozen bullets pelted her armor chest-high. She fell hard, and a sharp pain chased along her spine. She moaned, and the soldier advanced.

  Her vision blurred, but the Guardsman’s shadow was indisputable. She reached for her weapon and prepared to fire without aiming.

  But in that instant, she heard a familiar burst, and the darkness evolved into a brilliant explosion of fire, and the enemy soldier's body disintegrated before her, his limbs and innards carried away on flames.

  Lange stepped out from the brush, his laser-mallet launcher smoking from the barrel. He rushed to his captain's side.

  “Good shooting, soldier,” she said weakly, and he helped her up.

  “Are you all right, sir? You've taken several hits and your armor appears to be cracking over the upper left chest zone.”

  Janise took a long, deep breath, squinted again and realized her vision was restored, the pain along her spine dissipating.

  The thunder of explosions increased, and then gunfire close by. The rest of her Dance1 unit was also coming under attack.

  “I'm fine, Lange. Let's move.”

  As they started toward the facility and Janise tried to shake off the soreness induced by battered body armor, she realized that something was, in fact, wrong.

  There was a particular concentration
of pain inside her chest, just below her left collarbone. She felt as if a long pin had pricked her skin and was probing deep inside.

  She did not have to look down at her cracking body armor to know that it had not entirely withstood the onslaught of bullets.

  She had been shot.

  54

  S

  am Raymonds seemed to take great joy in his revelation, and he crossed his arms in self-satisfied smugness as the founder of Second Sunrise stepped toward him, stopped but a breath away, their eyes locked upon each other.

  “How could you have known about the note?” Adam spit. “It never left my possession until I finally burned it myself.”

  “Because I wrote the goddamn note, you egotistical moron. And if you had had the common sense to scan the note immediately for a time-valued encryption mark, you would have discovered details for a rendezvous with my people were included. We were ready to take you and your family to a safe house. We waited for you, and when you didn't show up, we risked everything by sending two of our people to your apartment. We found out you high-tailed it to god-knows-where. You stupid ass.”

  Sam shook his head and casually took a seat, crossed his legs.

  Adam did not look at the man. He stared into the shadows and felt the pain of Marte's final moments surging through him. He felt the cowardice and complacency that ran through his veins in those final few years of his wife's existence.

  Rand stepped forward, placed a hand upon his best friend's shoulder and turned to the traitor.

  “I'm not entirely clear on this, Sam,” he said. “You had evidence the PAC was responsible for the Arvas Syndrome, and you were part of an underground group not unlike this one. Which leads me to two obvious questions. Why did you and your group not expose the conspiracy? And why are we just hearing about this now?"

  “Oh, Rand. If only you had been running this dog-and-pony show,” Sam chuckled, then tightened his expression. “The answers are simple. You won't like them, of course. I'm sure you'll consider them very convenient. But the truth is what it is.

  “I did not have proof. Only names. I had nowhere near the clearance to access the really good stuff. If I had tried, I guarantee I would have had a bullet hole in my head within the hour. Names and rumors. That's all we ever had. And as for never filling either of you in on this little tidbit, well ... by the time I joined on, it was moot. You see, all evidence of Arvas magically disappeared once the operation was completed. There might be a guilt-ridden bastard somewhere on the planet who has an archival chip, but I bloody well doubt it.”

  “How can you be certain if you didn't have clearance?” Rand asked.

  “Because the nanotech division was closed down six months later, all systems files were purged and every tech who worked on Level 4 simply disappeared without a trace. I'm sure some archeologist will probably find them about a thousand years from now in a mass grave somewhere in the Sonora Desert.”

  Rand needed only a few seconds to digest this, and he sighed. Adam remained silent. Rand continued.

  “Let’s assume all this is true. What happened to your group?”

  “Attrition, Rand. Mostly by sudden, unexplained mortality.”

  Adam broke his silence but did not turn to face the traitor. “Then none of this makes any sense. You have as much reason to hate the PAC as any of us. You lost friends and colleagues, and you were willing to help my family at one time. Why in the name of decency have you done this to us?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Decency. Now, there's a subjective fucking concept. My people didn't dare try to track you down after you turned tail out of Houston. We were stretched too thin. It wasn't until years after I was the only survivor of the group that I came across one of your recruiters. I was actually very pleasantly surprised you'd gotten your act together and seemed to have a nice operation going. I saw a chance and I reached for it. My mistake.”

  “Why? Why, Sam? Why was it a mistake? We gave you refuge here. A chance to make a real difference in this fight! You did such an incredible job, you advanced to third in line for leadership. You brought in more recruits than anyone ever has. What did we ever do that was so terribly awful you would turn against us?”

  The traitor rolled his tongue across the front of his teeth and again tapped at his badly bruised eye. “I need to stretch,” he said confidently, then arose and began to pace.

  “You ask, ‘What did you do that was so terribly awful?’ The answer, Adam, is you did nothing. Not one fucking thing. Not for the 11 years I have endured in this mountain, and not for the 19 years you and Rand have lived here. Do you realize that in the past three centuries, the Earth has been torn to shreds by four world wars that killed 140 million people and toppled more than a hundred governments, all in less than 19 years combined?” He laughed. “You, Adam Smith, are quite possibly the most inept general any so-called ‘army’ has ever had in the recorded history of man. And that's one hell of an achievement, given that history is chock full of bombastic, arrogant fools who led their people to the slaughter.”

  “That's enough of this.” Rand started toward Sam, and the uptech raised his sidearm.

  Sam turned to the uptech. “Get back to the door, Tom! And put away the goddamn blast gun before you hurt yourself!” Then he pivoted to Rand and outstretched his right arm. “You stop and you bloody well listen to me. Both of you. You wanted to know why I did this? You want to understand what could drive someone to this? Then you listen to what I've got to say, and you take it like men.”

  Adam ran a hand across his mouth, wiping away perspiration. He leaned against the conference table.

  “The stage is yours,” Adam looked to the floor.

  “When I came here, there was hope. You put together a damn good monitoring net, and the wv.scan shield was brilliant. You had all the pieces in place. All you needed were more contacts in the PAC and more bodies on site. So, I went out and got you the personnel because I believed in the potential of this godforsaken hole. But I gradually discovered you had a little secret,” he pointed to Adam. “You were still the coward who ducked out of Houston and got your wife killed. You didn't establish this inane policy of ‘silent running’ because you wanted to avoid detection by the PAC. Hell, you just weren't man enough to confront those bastards, so you played it the only way that allowed you to stay hidden inside this mountain. Despite all your eloquence and all your promises, the fact is you didn't have a clue how to fight the PAC then, and you don't now.

  “You're a coward, Adam Smith. Look at you in that stupid fucking coat. Nobody in his right mind has dressed like that in 500 years. Your goddamn silver hair flowing down your back ... walking around like some kind of stereotypical ... grandfatherly ... all-knowing, all-seeing ... chieftain. Most of these people revere you, treat you like a fucking god. And all because of your words, never your actions. If they were to really look at the so-called ‘in-roads’ Second Sunrise has made in 19 years, they would be gone tomorrow.

  “But they won't leave! They can't. They've nowhere to go. It's damned near impossible to survive outside without a BluCard. They're not your followers. They're your prisoners, and they are as doomed as any who are idiotic enough to think they can beat the PAC. I just happen to be the only one who woke up to reality. End of story.”

  As Sam clapped, the young uptech was on top of him within seconds. “You're a lying bastard.” Tom shouted as he tossed his blast gun away and tackled the traitor. Sam's head landed hard against the floor, and the uptech turned him over, landed a hard-left cross into a cheekbone, and Sam moaned.

  Rand was the first to grab hold of Tom and yank him off the traitor. Sam made an aggressive push to race past Rand, and Adam realized that he had spied the blast gun. Adam got there first, aimed the weapon, and Sam retreated.

  The uptech stood. “I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. I couldn't let him go on like that.”

  “No, it's all right,” Adam said. “Place the cuffs on him.”

  Saliva
dribbled from the corner of Sam's mouth, and Adam looked into the cold, brown eyes of this man and all he saw was a predator who, for the moment, was at bay. The blast gun shook in his hand.

  Once the cuffs were restored, Adam dropped the gun on the conference table.

  “So, you consider me a pathetic excuse of a leader,” Adam said softly. “I will not debate you on that issue because I have not always made correct decisions. But my qualifications as a leader have nothing to do with your choice of acting against Second Sunrise tonight. Why did you choose the very time when we were finally taking overt, decisive action against the PAC? You say we've been dormant for 19 years, and yet when we finally make a move, you betray us. Why, Sam?”

  “Wow,” Sam said between moans, and he grimaced. “You'd make a damn good boxer, Tom.” He snickered, and then his face turned cold. “I almost did nothing. I gave you a chance tonight. I looked over the plans for the assault on Barbados. Hah, hah, hah. As lambs, you send them into a cave of wolves. Could you have honestly believed any of this would work? This is what 19 years produced? A fool's errand? A slaughter of men and women who for some insane reason would follow you around the universe? Failure was guaranteed, and failure it will be.”

  Adam and Rand shared a terrified glance, and the sensation of foreboding overwhelmed Adam. The pain in his chest was more pronounced. He stood over the traitor, who was lying on his side.

  “Who are you working with? What did you do?”

  “Doesn't matter,” he said without concern. “All things take care of themselves. You were always going to lose.” His eyes shifted, encompassing both of the founders of Second Sunrise.

  “You see, it simply doesn't matter what else I say. History has already been rewritten, and you have been removed.”

  55

  J

  anise did not care that she had a bullet in her chest, as long as it did not interfere with the work at hand.

  Just let me finish this. Don't you deprive me of what I need.