Benjamin Trump—elderly and thinning—tried to intercede, “Oh, now Ashley the boy didn’t mean anything by that.”
JB’s reply came not in words but in a bear hug against his mother’s legs. She silenced her tirade and returned his hug. A lump grew in her throat. A big hole opened in her chest.
Grandpa, who had already said his goodbyes to JB over a game of catch, bowed his head and walked away.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” she apologized.
She realized her son cried. Honest-to-god tears. Deep sobs. His shoulders raised and lowered. His arms clutched tight around her legs.
For a moment he shed the trappings of the mysterious child with the evolved brain chemistry and the supernatural insights. For a moment there stood nothing more than a nine-year-old boy about to leave his mother, possibly forever.
“Mommy,” he pleaded, “I love you, Mommy. I love you!”
“I know, I know,” she stroked his hair. “Listen, JB, I won’t let Trevor take you. You don’t have to go.”
The child answered through sobs, “Yes, I do have to go. Father is right. It is the only way. But I love you, Mommy. I hope you know that. I love you so much!”
He buried his head into her again and cried. She felt damp streaks from his eyes run along her pant leg.
“I love you too, honey. I always have. You’re my son.”
“Yes,” he agreed as if it might be a revelation. “I’m your son. I came from you, too.”
Ashley grabbed his hands and knelt in front of her boy. She searched his red eyes and spoke strongly to her son. Her words held a mother’s power; a power gentle enough to sculpt the heart of a child and strong enough to change the universe.
“That’s right, Jorgie, you remember that. You are a very special boy, but you’re also my son.” She held his hands up in her own, pressing her flesh to his. “A human boy. No matter what happens—no matter what else you may be—remember that. Remember our time together. Remember what it is like to be happy and sad; to love your parents, to play catch with grandpa. Don’t you ever forget, do you hear me?”
“I won’t, Mommy.”
“Promise me.”
Jorgie—tears still flowing—stepped to the bed, grabbed his stuffed bunny wrapped in its tiny blanked, and answered his mother.
“I promise.”
Clouds rolled in over the horizon and spoiled another brilliant May sunset. The cover overhead draped the hillside graveyard in early shadows. A gust signaling an approaching thunderstorm—still far off—blew between the rows of stone markers carrying dried leaves and tiny buds in a mix of old and new.
Hauser managed to land Eagle One with his usual skill across one of the cemetery roads with the landing gear touching down between headstones. The pilot waited behind as Trevor strolled among the tombs searching each name one after another until he found his old friend.
Dante Thomas Jones.
Trevor removed the baseball cap from his head and knelt first to one knee, then to both. He stared at the letters etched in stone.
He could not forget that Dante Jones had played a pivotal role in the plot against him. Nor could he forget, however, that Dante Jones had been his friend for many years going back to the days before the old world ended.
Forgiveness? No. Not possible. Dante had known as much when he purposely aimed his pistol to miss Trevor during their confrontation atop the White House. He had known as much when he had turned that pistol to his own temple, an act of responsibility as much as escape.
“I miss you, my old friend,” and his hand touched the cold marker. “I thought I’d come and see you before I go. I may not be back. Ah, hell, I probably won’t be back. I guess I should be honest with you. I guess…” Trevor’s thoughts trailed off to memories of the last decade.
“I guess I wasn’t always honest with you. Not completely. Maybe that’s part of the reason you listened to Evan. I made you my Internal Security Director because I wanted you close, because I trusted your instincts. That’s what I told you, wasn’t it? Part of that is true, I think. But if I’m going to confess, part of the reason is just because you were my friend and I wanted to give you something to do and I could keep an eye on you if I kept you close. Maybe I didn’t think you capable of succeeding in this new world without me around to keep watch over you. But I didn’t, did I? The bigger we grew the more I expected from you and I wasn’t around to help out when it got tough.”
An early evening bat whizzed overhead in search of prey. Trevor watched it fly off until its shadowy body blended with the darkening sky.
“I’ll bet that was tough for you. Well, not in the beginning. Early on it was all easy. All black and white. You had a bunch of guys and started doing your patrols and watching out for any criminals that might have been among the ranks of the survivors. Easy stuff early on. Then as we grew—well, that’s when things got hard. I wasn’t much of a help either, was I?”
Trevor recalled chewing out Dante on more than one occasion. He remembered the creation of the Senate and how that body held influence over I.S. Legal influence that Trevor had sanctioned.
“You were caught in the middle sometimes. Okay, a lot of times. Maybe all the time, right? But I didn’t have the time to worry about it, Dante. Too much to do. Too many big things to pay attention to. That’s why I always told you how much I hated all the politicians, the procedures, the bullshit. It clouds things. Evan knew that. He played it well. He played you well.”
Trevor removed his hand from the gravestone and stood.
“I can’t forgive you, Dante, even if I do miss you. I’m sorry. Maybe I am a bit of a monster. Sometimes I feel trapped, kind of like you must’ve felt. I have to do what I have to do. I mean,” Trevor gripped his hands into fists and looked at them, “I have nothing other than this war. Over the years, I’ve come to learn something. It’s not nice. It’s not heroic. It’s actually something to be ashamed of, I think. What I’ve come to learn, Dante, is that maybe when the existence of your entire race is at stake, then maybe the ends do justify the means. Because I’ll tell you something, Dante, I will do anything to finish this. Anything.”
That thought stung.
“Even sacrifice my son. Do you know how scary that is? To know that I’m capable of anything if I think it serves the cause? Does that make me a fanatic? A dictator? That’s what the Old Man warned me about when he said my soul was damned. I can do these things but they haunt me all the same. If JB dies, it will rip my heart apart. But if I think it could save our people, then I’ll do it. I hope that doesn’t happen. I pray it doesn’t. But damn if I won’t do it.”
The tombstone did not answer.
“Hell, I don’t even know exactly what I’m doing. I just have a feeling, you know? A feeling that I have to shake things up and that he can do it.”
Another breeze blew through. Far away a soft rumble of thunder carried over the hillside cemetery.
“I have to get going. I think if you were here you’d wish me luck. I believe that. On some level you thought you were doing something that was right. You thought I had gone too far or become too powerful.”
Trevor thought about his rage-filled purges of Internal Security and the Senate upon his return. He thought about arrests and executions and instant justice dispensed in the name of exposing the guilty, punishing traitors, and streamlining The Empire to face the invasion in the West.
“Maybe you had a point after all, right? Well it won’t matter if I fail. If somehow we survive all this, then I’ll ask for forgiveness. Until then, I have to do this. I don’t think I have any choice.”
A new dawn came. The sun reached skyward from behind a horizon of ocean water. Seagulls cawed and cackled around the docks, the buildings, and the artificial reefs of overturned ships.
Most of the Naval Yard at Norfolk served as little more than a museum in the years since Armageddon. With ground wars in the south against the Hivvans and then west against California, Trevor and The Empire held little need for
naval vessels. A cruel irony considering the U.S. Navy weathered the Armageddon storm better than the other military branches.
Parts of the Norfolk docks did come back on line to support and supply coastal patrols as well as long range reconnaissance and intelligence ships. The former group included The Empire’s new Barracuda-class attack subs: small, fast, and deadly. The latter group comprised a handful of nuclear powered submarines and a few surface ships used to deliver spies and arms to points around the globe.
Activity at Norfolk peaked prior to the California invasion. Gordon Knox’s intelligence apparatus kept ships coming and going constantly, particularly to Europe to support organized survivors there as well as the Caribbean where Hivvan remnants held sway over several islands.
The Order’s invasion changed Norfolk once more. As Trevor and his son Jorgie exited Eagle One on the open pavement between warehouses near a line of impressive docks, they thought the place deserted.
To the north Trevor saw dead sea warriors listing in their berths, victims in the first year of Armageddon left to rust and wither.
The bow of the cruiser USS Leyte Golf sat crumbled against its moorings as if some great force had knocked it sideways. The Destroyer USS Porter suffered a similar fate Most of its stern had been torn away land its lower decks flooded.
A brilliant white Snowy Egret perched on the tilted deck like an arrogant Admiral stubbornly refusing the loss of his ship. As Trevor stepped across the pavement the bird found The Emperor and watched him with a gaze Trevor imagined to be judgmental.
Further away the scene appeared even grimmer. Rusted hulls spoke of capsized behemoths, at least one an aircraft carrier. Trevor wondered how many brave souls lay entombed inside.
But the docks in front of Trevor and JB differed from the rest of the base. One of the southern berths hosted the frigate USS Nicholas with a crew onboard.
Two Barracuda subs stood ready at the docks, their black and gray hulls gave them an eerie, predatory appearance complimented by the hammerhead bow where two portals—like eyes—sat half in and half out of the water. A lethal-looking spine ran the length of the ship much like Jules Verne’s Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
However, Trevor and his son were not there to ride aboard either the Nicholas or the Barracudas. Their journey required something with greater range than the attack subs and a lower profile than a frigate.
The vessel that fit the bill waited in the harbor waters at the end of the main pier. In comparison to the much smaller barracudas, the USS Newport News Los Angeles-class submarine played the part of the seasoned warrior, a capable and deadly monster sporting an intimidating conning tower above a cylinder-like hull.
Not only had the Newport News won accolades in the old world, but it had already achieved legendary status as the vessel that conveyed Jon Brewer and his strike team to the arctic north to secure the ruins and turn the war to humanity’s favor. It was an elder statesman of the sea that had found fresh purpose in a new world.
Trevor and his son stopped at the edge of the pier and gazed at their waiting ride. He held a leather duffle bag in one hand. Jorgie dressed in khaki shorts and a navy blue shirt and hauled a pre-end-of-the-world The Transformers backpack complete with cartoon robots morphing into cars and planes. He also held bunny—wrapped in his protective blanket—tight to his chest.
Behind them came Rick Hauser—Trevor’s personal pilot—a blond haired man with glasses who still looked young despite being in his mid-thirties. He carried two more bags and another backpack, all heavily loaded.
“You don’t need to do this, Rick. You’ve earned a rest.”
“A rest? No, sir,” Hauser answered as he set down the heavy bags. “With you gone I’d be pretty bored. That’s what happened last year. So with all due respect, I’d just assume come with you. If you’ll have me.”
Trevor placed hand on Hauser’s shoulder in a sign of appreciation.
A navy officer wearing a captain’s uniform approached the group. He removed his cap revealing gray hair with a growing bald spot on top.
Trevor extended his free hand and asked, “Captain Farway?”
“Yes, sir,” the man offered a sincere and strong grip. “It is an honor to finally serve alongside you, Emperor.”
“Trevor. That’s about the only name I’ve been comfortable with in all this.” he replied with a shade of a grin.
Trevor held members of the old world’s military in high esteem, particularly those who had lived through action. Captain Farway’s perils at sea during the first year had reached Trevor via Jon Brewer, who had rode with Farway to Greenland six years ago. In addition, Farway had leant his services to help destroy The Order’s hidden base in the Atlantic last year, a move that might have saved The Empire. At least temporarily.
Trevor continued, “If I remember correctly, we met a few years ago during a symposium on naval organization and deployment.”
“Yes, sir, I remember. First meeting I ever had with the brass that was clear and to the point,” Farway smirked then looked to the bags. “Are all your things here?”
“Yes, Captain. What’s our time table?”
Farway replaced his cap and answered, “We’ve stripped down pretty good for speed and should make good time. I hope to get you there sometime late on Wednesday.”
Trevor calculated—five days to cross the Atlantic.
“Father, will we be under water the whole way?”
Farway answered, “That’s right, little guy. But don’t you worry; it’ll be a smooth ride.”
Hauser muttered, “Underwater—the whole—way?”
Captain Farway glanced at the pilot and answered with a grin, “That’s right. Say, you’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
Trevor answered fast, “No, no of course not. No.”
“Father, why are you sweating?”
“Say, can I help you with those things?” Farway volunteered but did not wait for an answer. He grabbed Trevor’s duffle bag as well as one of the bags from Hauser. The pilot and the navy man walked forward on the dock.
A seagull swooped low in search of food but found nothing and swooped into the sky even faster.
Trevor and Jorgie waited behind.
“Are you ready, buddy?”
JB nodded with forced enthusiasm.
Trevor held his hand down and open. The child reached up and grasped it. Trevor closed his fingers and JB’s hand nearly disappeared inside. Together father and son walked across the dock toward the Newport News.
The Snowy Egret watched from its perch aboard the destroyed USS Porter as the new arrivals worked their way inside the submarine. Soon thereafter the remaining topside sailors disappeared below and the hatches closed. The smaller attack subs—the Barracudas—powered to life and took positions alongside the larger vessel as it sailed away from its moorings. All three boats cut gentle wakes disturbing an otherwise peaceful harbor.
As the trio neared the horizon, the smaller Barracudas broke off their escort and the USS Newport News slipped beneath the waters as if to hide from the world.
The Snowy Egret could not appreciate the beauty in the sight of the war machines heading off into a rising sun, but it captured the entire scene with its mechanical eyes; recording the view on an internal storage device that was one part circuitry and one part biological mass.
9. The Last Mission
Nina Forest stood in the observation lounge inside the Communications Center on the grounds of McConnell Air Force Base. The windows—shattered six days prior during Trevor’s visit to the center—remained open. A smoky breeze blew inside from what remained of the base.
Most of the papers and equipment of value to Casey Fink’s Headquarters Unit evacuated two days before. One big map pinned to a wall remained the exception, but it held no markers for The Order to interpret upon their arrival which was expected to occur within twenty-four hours.
The conference table sported a big crack through the middle but maintained enoug
h strength to bear the weight of Nina’s gear: a backpack, utility belt, ballistic armor, a Kevlar helmet, her sword, and more.
She heard scattered shouts from outside where her team gathered. The engine of a Blackhawk helicopter spooled to life at the same time as a formation of human fighter jets roared overhead on their way west to meet the vanguard of Voggoth’s army.
As had been the case all her life, the trappings of battle—machine engines, shouts, chaos, the smell of fire—did not disturb Nina Forest. She felt at home among them. The only place, in the entire world, where she felt at home. Except for those few moments with Trevor before she had left the estate. That had felt like home, too, even better. More personal.
She knew the time had come, however, to cast that aside. She did her best to focus on the mission. The helicopter downstairs waited for her. She had memorized the appropriate command codes and evaluated areas of operation. She would lead her team behind the lines with the goal of hurting The Order’s armies, weakening them before they reached the Mississippi.
Of course Voggoth was in no hurry to engage The Empire’s defenses. Apparently he waited for his alien cohorts to arrive so they could take credit for his victory. She wished The Empire maintained the offensive capability to launch a counter-attack because Voggoth’s hesitation provided a perfect opportunity for a kill shot.
Alas, their losses in the Rockies greatly diminished offensive firepower. They would have to be content with an aggressive defense, like those fighter jets overhead, attacks by the Chrysaor after her repairs finished, and Nina’s Dark Wolves.
What did I do to make Trevor leave me? Did I betray him?
Nina shook her head as if trying to shake free the question. She could not afford to dwell on this. But at the same time, she could not help herself. She had always suspected more happened during that missing year. Since last summer—since receiving the video tape—the question as to why they separated ate at her soul each and every day.
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 15